


We are breathing river water

by Pefa



Category: Hunter X Hunter, LOONA (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, DO keep in mind the "unreliable narrator" thing, Gen, Gon and his crew exist and go parallel to the girls, Kurta clan lives, Unreliable Narrator, because I don't have energy to also deal with ((vague helpless motions at canon Kurapika)), but its not about them, but not overly pronounced, can an adventure be slow burn?, chuuves one-sided pining is a thing, first arc is (mostly) canon-compliant, graphic depictions of violence is for the latter half of the act, it will take several arcs for all of the loona to gather, loona main characters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:02:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 42,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25249606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pefa/pseuds/Pefa
Summary: It begins at the starting site of the 287th Hunter Exam, where four girls meet each other for the very first time.For hxh-only readers: loona consists of 12 girls. The story built in their music videos (loonaverse) is not the basis for their story here, and this is not a dimension-travel case. Each of them grew in this world, so no deep knowledge of loonaverse lore required. Iwouldrecommend watching their clips in order from Vivid to So What, to at least get a general idea about each of them. But you probably can deal without that, it's slow-paced enough to get acquainted with them.For loona-only: shorter end of the stick, as a lot of the things would be confusing without any prior knowledge of hxh worldbuilding. But the anime has 40 or so hours of pure content overall, so you might just watch it. And, technically, you can watch just the first arc for now.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 10





	1. You are here

**Author's Note:**

> Niche AUs, ey?  
> I jumped into it straight from a Homestuck AU in February 2019 and never took a break from it since. And NOW I am FINALLY able to talk about it! It is both invigorating and scary  
> First of all:  
> 1\. This is not my first fanfiction, but  
> 2\. Last time I wrote anything was 8 years ago  
> 3\. It was a small amount of writing, mostly drabbles  
> 4\. English is not my first language. If there is anyone wanting to beta-read this giant (first arc turned out to be massive), PLEASE contact me  
> 12 main characters and each of them has to have a character arc?! Pfffft, what a fool would bring such a curse upon themselves! Haha! Ha...  
> That said, each girl will have time to shine and a character arc. It will take A While, but we will get there. I do not write this with any ships in mind, except the… thing that chuuyves dynamic is. I am not overly interested in shipping, so don't expect anything (my own ships are impossible here, so, whatever, if you see what you want to see - have fun)  
> Loona characters are mainly based on their mv and loonaverse representation but there are also differentiations  
> Gon and crew are certainly great and important, however it’s not about them. But hoo boy, are they trying to weasel in. And, partially, succeeding  
> Also, none of the girls replaced any characters from the canon. They aren't living in a vacuum, but no sticking to known families and backstories  
> This is based on the 2011 anime version with heavy usage of manga information, mostly for the worldbuilding. Some tidbits were lost in adaptation (and I am going to weaponize them)  
> For all orbits, who are desperate for a gen fanfiction, but do not yet have time or appetite to watch hxh - I see you. I know how it feels to settle for crossovers with completely unknown fandoms just to get some crumbs. So here you go! Wrote some basic information about Hunters [here](https://twitter.com/garlicTangerine/status/1282780734579712002), no spoilers and not too detailed, just to roughly get what the title means But, seriously, hxh is good, go watch it when you have time  
>    
> [Cover for the first arc](https://twitter.com/garlicTangerine/status/1282802814192885760)
> 
> [Spotify playlist!](%E2%80%9C) It is for the fic in general, no spoilery songs, no specific character or relationships songs. Some of them are for the mood they creating, some are there for the text  
> (DAY6 - WARNING! is a song for both readers and characters for the beginning of the wabrw, hehe)
> 
> Title is inspired by a quote from my favorite Richard Siken poem "War of the foxes":  
> "He knows that when you snap a mast it's time to get a set of oars or learn to breathe underwater."

**ACT 1: DEPARTURE**

_What can you know about a person? They shift  
in the light. You can’t light up all sides at once. _

Richard Siken

_He cannot get the bullet out, he thinks, he can’t, and then he does.  
A little piece of grit to build a pearl around. _

Richard Siken

  
  
There were surprisingly many people in a small restaurant in Zaban city, the one that got itself stuck to a massive corporate building not far from the central market of the city. The city itself was a popular stop among tourists, the last and most well-developed city on the way to a big port, slightly elevated up the slope of the mountain providing quite a nice view. Its main attraction was a known flea market that more than once brought valuable historic relics back to light. Accidentally, of course. 

Usually it was a rather lively and busy place, both flea market and the restaurant, but at dawn, before sunrise (which, by itself, was a questionable time to be open for business), half a dozen people sitting around in the latters’ small hall was an unusual sight. Occupying a half of all seatplaces available - unreasonable, even. And yet all of the visitors were clearly where they wanted to be, wide awake and not the little bit in a hurry, slowly eating their meals or lazing around by full or almost full cups.

The small bell above the door chimed as two women walked in the warm room, all occupants slanting a glance at them. A tall, densely muscled woman with tanned skin, an olive shawl partially covering her soft pink hair, in sturdy, decidedly nondescript clothes and a slim girl, painfully obviously not out of teenagehood yet, with a bundle sticking out of her green medium-sized backpack and a pink beany over long black hair. The second one looked around warily, fidgeting with wide sleeves of an purposefully oversized olive coat, as the older put a hand on her shoulder.

“What’s your order will be?” asked a cook, barely giving them a glance while lifting a lid from the pot to check on the contents.

The woman gave a toothy smile to one of the men dispassionately eating his salad, before addressing the cook. “A steak for one.”

“How would you like it?”

“Cooked slowly, for us to see the light,” she clapped the girl’s shoulder, gently pushing her to walk further into the building, as the cook nodded and, putting back the lid, went back to stirring something out of the girl’s view.

Past one of the unlabeled doors, a table with four chairs around it stood in a three-by-three room. As the girl moved further, eyeing a small rectangle tableau over the door she just walked through, her guide stopped, staying on the threshold. She crossed arms, leaning against a doorframe, eyeing the brunette with a mirthless smirk.

“This is where my job ends and the actual challenge will begin. Sure you want to push your luck, kid?”

The examinee nodded. “Of course. No point in getting to the starting line only to give up.” Her expression morphed from a serious one into a grateful smile towards the woman. “Thank you for guiding me, Djumva. Whatever this exam will bring, I will do my best.”

The guide shrugged humorously, turning to close the door. “Your choice, but don’t overdo it. There is always next year, no need to die on your first try. Good luck, HeeJin.”

As the door closed, HeeJin put her backpack on the table, her determination only fueled by the disagreement she felt with the parting words of the recent acquaintance. Speaking objectively, the exam next year _would_ happen, there never had been a year when one was canceled, it was a well-known fact. From Djumva’s perspective, HeeJin had no need to push herself past her limits and into the grave, this year being her first attempt. Statistics on pass to fail ratio was easily found from a simple google search, and the harsh truth was that passing on the first try was a rare occurrence, once in three years, on average, while both newbies and veterans of the exam got crushed physically or mentally each exam. Unfortunately, Heejin had only one shot at it.

The girl looked up at the barely noticeable startle she felt and, glancing around, she saw the plate now counting up. An elevator, then. The starting line was going to be underground.

Not knowing how long the ride will take, HeeJin hurriedly tugged her backpack open to get the sticking bundle out, unfurling it. Bland sheath of her sable no longer felt alien after months of using it, even if she still felt bitter over the loss of the previous one. Despite her real treasure being the weapon itself, the scabbard held sentimental value, both of them given her six years ago by her siblings. Her two dear possessions that felt truly earned, a custom ordered present made when her parents deemed her skill to be worthy of a spotlight.

But that pride and personalization put in the order made them a liability now. Mostly the beautiful incrustation on the sheath, but the sable's guard still held the family's insignia on the spot where it morphed into a basket-hilt. It wasn't well-known, but still... Even if she masked the symbol to the best of her abilities, the old sheath had to go.

She hid the original sheath as soon as she was able to (“left behind” was a truer phrase, as she doubted it hadn't been found yet, but HeeJin was always a dreamer, her brightest trait, most glaring flaw).

Putting a familiar weight on her waist grounded her better than any of the simple breathing techniques she did on her way here. She _will_ pass. HeeJin will give her best and take the license and never have to be this afraid for her future ever again.

The elevator slowly descended, HeeJin watching the numbers change, apprehension in the air, until it pinged, reaching one hundred.

Doors opened, the rush of chill earthy air and contrast of the scenery on the other side of the door making HeeJin blink. A shift from light and inviting room to the dim lights of a large hall, rough walls made off slabs of concrete arching into high ceiling, it pooled into unease in her stomach, which turned into knot when she stepped out and felt the attention on her. A crowd, most having some sort of weapon visible on them, their physique well-developed, stood there, turning their focus on her, some only glancing out of a corner of their eyes for a brief moment, others turning their heads and eyeing her openly. The air around them was completely different from the one people she saw on the train on her way here, the aura of competency in their stances and eyes, as they stood there, assessing the newcomer. Focused attention passed in a couple seconds, leaving her tense, but it was enough for her to have to consciously stop herself from gripping the straps of her backpack.

Experts in their fields, all of them. No doubts, those were the real contenders for the title.

A distant regret of keeping her natural hair color flickered in the background of her thoughts but passed unattended, already thought of and deemed unwise countless times before. Length of the hunter exam varied and while some ended in a week, others could last almost a month in an inhospitable environment. If she recolored and her natural black started showing, it would be more noticeable and memorable than being just another black-haired person. HeeJin had to use lenses since her eyes were rather vibrant, but nothing could be done here, she’ll just have to be extra careful and hope the exam will last less than two weeks.

On the upside, it seemed like she was disregarded as a competition, not viewed as a threat to the others, even if she knew not to entertain the idea of them missing her sable. Don’t get her wrong, it still stung, being so easily underestimated and mentally swept to the side, but she could use that later.

“Welcome,” sounded to her left, cheerful and polite. “Here is your tag.” Turning towards the speaker, HeeJin saw a short, three to four feet high, person of vibrant green color and unusually shaped bald head, wearing a business suit. They were holding out a tag, number 234 written on it. Gingerly taking it, HeeJin pinned it to her clothes. “Be sure to always keep it visible and safe - losing it leads to a disqualification.”

She took another second making sure it was secure and out of the way of her backpack straps. “Thank you,” she nodded to the person aiming to mirror their previous gentle politeness. They half-nodded back before turning around and walking away, leaving HeeJin to decide what to do now, while other participants arrived here.

She took a couple steps towards the crowd, aiming to wander around and see what the actual examinees looked like in person, silent and judging, before being interrupted once again.

“Hello, there!” another voice made her turn around, eyeing a soft-looking man in somewhat traditional-looking clothing, a round face adorning a friendly smile. “You are certainly looking the rookie part!” He joked in good humor.

“I suppose,” HeeJin couldn’t help but feel weary. His friendliness was off-putting compared with the cold scrutiny she received not a minute ago, the green person aside, as they were clearly not an examinee. As the man came closer, she hid her hands in pockets, a precaution against handshaking - some people take their welcoming etiquette very seriously and as much as HeeJin respected that and tried to abide by it in line with places she was in, rare handshakes she got always left her uncomfortable, mostly due to people’s reaction. (Logically, she was unlikely to get the usual reaction here, but for the last couple months it was rather an unconscious decision, that hid her hands, than a deliberate choice on her part)

“My name is Tonpa!” he introduced himself. Now, as he was closer, HeeJin saw his tag had 16 written on it. “You are rather young for taking the exam, don’t you think?”

HeeJin made a noncommittal sound. “The application rules do not have restrictions by age.”

Tonpa laughed, unfazed by her reserved answers and neglect of her own introductions. “Oh, I am well aware! I myself applied for the first time at ten!” 

Wait, what?

She blinked, examining him again, coming to a conclusion that the man couldn’t be younger than forty.

“I know, I know,” he raised both hands, his smile crooked despite his defensive gesture. “I am sort of a veteran of this exam.”

She felt confused, that was a hell of a time gap! And a horrible idea to let a ten-year old compete, but she already moved past questioning the absence of age restrictions two months ago. “You came back now? To fulfill your dream?” 

Tonpa waved his hand. “No, I am a regular here. This is my thirty-sixth time taking the exam.”

“That is fascinating,” answered politely HeeJin, plastering a friendly expression in return. What the hell. “You must have quite an experience then...”

She couldn’t believe that she, of all the people, had to think this, but doesn’t he have a job? There is a point in one’s attempts when they must let go and move on with their life and god knew, thirty-five sounded thirty too many past that point. And Tonpa looked healthy, posture strong, especially for the deceptive amount of fat the man had, his earlier steps were quiet and confident, which drew some unflattering conclusions - he was either a coward, a recruiter or a bad liar. Neither was the company she was interested in.

“… but as intriguing that is,” cut in HeeJin before he could say anything else. “I would rather not impose my company - it is both exciting and troublesome for me, this being the first attempt, and I make quite a poor conversationalist in this state.”

“Oh! Ah...” her answer took him off-guard for a moment, not having a prepared answer for that angle of her indifference. Although, she had to hand that to him, Tonpa gathered himself quickly, his smile morphing into a gentle and understanding one. His eyes, not so much. “No worries, few here are chatty folk. But, since I had so many attempts, I know many of the other regulars of the exam, maybe I can tell about them and calm some of that stress?” Turning towards the crowd, he looked over it for a second before pointing with his chin to the left, at the tall longhaired man with a spear. “For example, he...”

She hurriedly shook her head. “I am deeply grateful for your proposition.” If he kept insisting, she would be struggling to politely detach herself from his attention after another minute or two. Her hint wasn’t that much of a hint and she was sure her intention of concluding the dialog was heard loud and clear. That, plus insisting on sharing information on other examinees ruled Tonpa-coward out. Unless he was creative enough to make up characters on the spot (which she doubted). In any case, she would be socially obligated to listen to him further if she accepted his information, and HeeJin got stuck in such dialogs way too many times to not have a developed immediate rebuttal for them. “But what I meant to say was that I would really appreciate some solitude. My journey was an all-nighter one and I’d like to collect myself, if you don’t mind.”

“A. Ah, I see,” agreeably nodded Tonpa, deflating slightly. “Understandable, taking weeding out tests the first time is always difficult, and, note for the future, it is almost always all-nighters. Then, before you go, how about a quick toast to commemorate the new acquaintance?” He pulled out two cans of orange juice from his over the shoulder bag, holding one out to her, which she unflinchingly took. 

Bad liar it was.

“Thank you,” smiled HeeJin, gratefully dipping her head as she shrugged off the backpack to put the can in the outer pocket. “I’ll make sure to drink it when I’m thirsty - just drank a half a bottle of water on the way down,” she pointed her head in the direction of the elevator, apologetically smiling.

“Haha, good call,” Tonpa laughed, hiding his own can. “Well then, talk to you later?”

“Sure!” smiled HeeJin, stepping back.

He never had any close female friends for sure, to offer a stranger a drink of unknown origin while standing at the starting site of the most brutal exam in the world, or else he would not even attempt.

Heading towards the crowd, she waved to him, before turning away and scanning the people around. Moving through had been a tense thing as almost everyone around towered over her and watched from the corner of their eyes as she moved past them. The atmosphere around was inhospitable, to say the least. There was a brief flicker light on the rough arching ceiling coming from behind and she guessed it was the next applicant arriving.

* * *

As she moved through the less cramped area of the crowd, she heard footsteps approaching. Turning to the source, HeeJin froze, surprised gasp leaving her lips. A girl, her age, even! And visibly non-threatening, with her peach dress (which, what the hell?), knitted maroon elbow-high fingerless gloves and poncho-like shoulder cover, she was standing out with soft colors and materials of her clothes. Her burgundy hair was tied in two low ponytails, almost bouncing at her energetic step. Wide smile, showing way more teeth then would be considered perfectly comforting and the sheer force in her eyes, the girl looked wildly out of place here. The only part of her that was expected, were the knee-high boots that meant business and a tag on the poncho with number 10 written over it.

The girl was at arms length from her before HeeJin could even open her mouth and promptly erased that distance too, intertwining their arms by the elbow.

“Hello!” she chirped, tone upbeat and friendly. “Nice to meet you! Please say you aren’t going to drink that juice.”

HeeJin frowned. “No one with half a brain would.”

“Well, some, apparently would!” The girl rolled her eyes, sighing dramatically. “It is better for them to fail this early on, if they are _that_ gullible. Poor boys.”

She scrunched her nose. Really? How did those people even get here? “What happened to them?”

“Ran to the bathroom and stayed there. With how fast it worked, some potent laxative in those cans.” The girl shrugged smoothly, tugging her in an unknown direction, somewhere back towards the elevator and closer to the wall. 

HeeJin nodded. She thought so too, anything other appearing a bit too much for the elimination of competitors even before the exam officially started.

“Aaa-nyy-way, I was not expecting there to be yet another teenage girl at the exam,” shared the girl, grinning coyly at HeeJin. “So imagine my surprise when you walked in! I am Chuu,” she introduced, “nice to meetchu!”

“Same,” the fact that the girl was closer to her in age put her in a better mood, more talkative one. She could see becoming friends with her, even. If Chuu is not a psycho murderer, that is, the contrast between her and everyone else jarring, and HeeJin really should stop baseless unflattering suspicions rising in her head, the girl hadn’t done anything to warrant any yet. “Nice to meet you too, Chuu, my name is HeeJin. Pardon me asking, but you don’t look fitting the situation?”

“Neither do you,” easily parried Chuu, eyes glinting and HeeJin let out an exasperated huff, smiling despite herself. Fair. Most of the getups around were either traditional or deliberately nondescript.

“But at least I am not in a dress. Are you sure in your choice of attire?” explained HeeJin, worried of the girl’s modesty, as her dress ended right above the knee and Hunter exam was notorious for its difficulty, which included strenuous physical activity.

She had doubts for any choice besides pants, that's all.

“Ooooooh, _that’s_ what you mean,” cocked her head Chuu, furrowing brows in overdramatization, acting as if she did not understand what HeeJin meant previously. “Safety shorts. Why has noone ever heard of them?” Chuu grumbled the girl with a comically soured expression.

Oh, right. They exist. “I did, just never thought of them much, I suppose.”

“Highly recommend them! They save from so much headache, you won’t believe! Tragic that not everyone likes to listen to the voice of reason when wearing dresses but it’s not my problem,” assured her Chuu, grumbling the last part under the breath, clearly having someone else in mind, making HeeJin smile wider. She liked her energy. It was a breath of fresh air in contrast to her last weeks.

Bursting in a small open space near one of the walls, Chuu came to a stop, apparently getting to their destination.

In front of them stood another girl, with purple wavy hair gathered in two high ponytails and glinting purple eyes. Her tag read 81. When she saw she had HeeJin’s attention, she grinned, eyes full of enthusiasm, and made a little greeting handwave. “Hello! My name is Choerry!”

“HeeJin,” she introduced as both of them gave each other once-over, Choerry keeping a bright smile on her face all the while. 

Despite wearing something more sensible for the occasion, the girl still looked alien here. At least she wasn’t wearing a dress, instead opting for jeans with three translucent rings at the bottom and rather free straps going from the waist and over shoulders, partially pressed down by a laptop backpack. HeeJin had concerns over decisions like a breezy white blouse with wide open sleeves and sandals on two-inch heels, but otherwise nothing criminal.

Still, Choerry, especially with other examinees waiting further down by the pipes and cables on the wall, stuck out. Neither she nor Chuu looked nearly as dangerous as the crowd around and, furthermore, HeeJin couldn’t see any weapon on them either. Low hum of worry filled her throat.

“Aren’t you going to critique her fashion choices too?”

HeeJin squinted at Chuu. “There is a line between “chose to wear a dress for a physically demanding exam” and ”looks like a student on a stroll in the park for the same exam”, easily identifiable, at that. One of those, by a small margin, is more sensible than the other. Very small margin.”

Chuu puffed her cheeks as Choerry laughed at her comment. “There was no rule to wear something bland for the exam and, trust me, I am used to wearing those through storms in Agyati forests, I’ll be fine.” HeeJin glanced at her sandals for the last time and sighed. That was a bold statement, one she had no means to verify or any want to. “If it brings peace to you, know that I’ve seen plenty of fighters with weirder fashion choices.”

HeeJin absolutely have _not_ seen “fighters with weirder fashion choices”, not even many variations of fighters’ attires at all. Most of the combat-able people she had seen wore suits and they were fairly uniformed and bland. Maybe it was normal in certain circles? Or some people just liked some attires regardless how unfitting they were for a situation?

She looked back at Chuu, who hopped on one of the wide pipes running along the walls, seating herself on it, slightly overlooking the crowd. She was still puffing her cheeks at the answer, sending a mockingly stern glare, and HeeJin was unable to hold back a smile.

* * *

“In any case, forgoing appearances, it is still odd that you two are here - I was told it was rare for teenage girls to apply? Was that untrue?” HeeJin asked, shifting her gaze from one of them to the other.

Chuu moved her shoulder, thinking back to the exams her friends told her about. “I’d say, not as rare as civilians think.”

“Around one each year, probably,” piped in Choerry. “Teenagers trying to get the license isn’t far out of ordinary, most just wait until their twenties while they train and prepare for their specialization.”

The fact, that the Exam did not have an age limit requirement, was a statement in and of itself.

“Is this your first attempt?” Chuu smiled. HeeJin was a curious one and direct in her questions, too. And if Choerry had subtle prodding lining hers, swordswoman seemed more straightforward. At the very least, HeeJin was behaving like that in the beginning and was not trying to solve her right of the bat. Chuu found that cute.

She nodded. “Yep, my friends already took it, I am last to get a license.”

HeeJin blinked at that, as Choerry, who already knew that, went ahead and added: “Same here!”

Chuu momentarily squinted at her from the corner of her eye. She tried several times to discreetly make Choerry tell her more, interested in real Hunters, as they were a rare kind of bird with little solid information available on them. Some stories clearly born from collective exaggeration and others, more truthful and valuable, were kept secret, only found if you dug by name with appropriate access rights. Clearly, if Choerry had them, Chuu would like to listen. She understood that she could be lied to, but if so, it would only add some new entries to a list of uncountable fables she already knew, no skin off her back. And if she was honest, well, Chuu was all ears.

She _would_ like to learn more, if the girl did not keep seamlessly getting out of the railroading questions!

HeeJin slowly nodded to herself, eyes glancing at their clothes again before going unfocused for a moment. Chuu felt corners of her smile twitch wider at the irony of HeeJin worrying about them while being the most likely to fail. Silly, you are at the start of the exam, there are experts in their fields around you and more than a half of those are killers. 

“Do you know anyone here?” HeeJin continued satisfying her thirst for information, looking over her shoulder. A cursory glance around would prove that the crowd surrounding them did not change much, newcomers mostly adding from the side of the elevator, as it became increasingly difficult to navigate between people without bumping into them. Chuu liked having a good vantage point. Choerry did too as they were both sitting on the pipes before HeeJin’s arrival, but the girl apparently decided to keep her company on the ground. “Besides Tonpa,” she clarified.

Clearly interested in the topic, Choerry eagerly rushed into answering. “Yes! Tonpa told me about some of them - he is rather chatty, or is so when he tries to poison someone,” Choerry leaned closer to HeeJin, lowering volume of her voice, but not dipping into secretive whispers. “See that large man in ashen clothes? Wearing a blue tuque, he just sat on the floor?..”

Tuning out Choerry, Chuu let her gaze move along pipes on the walls, wondering how much longer it was before the exam would begin. Since she was one of the earliest arrivals, she managed to see and follow each of the newcomers or a bit with her eyes, as well as get bored out of her mind doing so, since most of them were blander than dirt. She smiled at the memory of Tonpa’s fake friendliness as he tried to poison her, chatting for almost half an hour, waiting for the laxative to work. She even asked for a second can before he got a hint and left on his own. When the gathering just began the stream of applicants was slow, picking up the last few hours, it taking more than an hour and a half before Choerry arrived, and taking less than two after that before HeeJin did.

Speaking of, the arrival of girls of her age was surprising. Even more, given Choerry’s everything, Chuu was willing to bet she’d be able to pass the exam this year without breaking a sweat. Maybe the expectations she had would be proven wrong and she will have some actual challenge and-or fun here. Being the last one to apply for the Hunter license, she was forced to complete it alone instead of teaming up with Go Won last year. It was Yves’s decision to take that mission back then, after all, so off she went.

“... then, there is number 59 - watched her snap at 34 after he walked too slowly past her, a tense woman,” continued Choerry as Chuu zoned back, smile never fully dissipating. The conversation moved past the visible applicants and to the ones that could not be seen from the girls’ angle. “She is an ex-soldier, crippled one of the contestants last year. Be careful with her.” Choerry tilted her head to the other side, waving vaguely in a random direction. “Another three, Amori brothers, numbers 197 through 199…”

A cloud of bloodlust briefly settled over them, passing in a heartbeat, as the source somewhat regained his composure. Chuu consciously controlled her breathing, keeping it unflinching, while HeeJin startled and glanced over her shoulder anxiously. Several people around them also tensed. Choerry paused, looking where HeeJin did, arching her eyebrow, but then continued talking as if nothing happened.

Chuu deliberately did not spare a glance at Hisoka, focused on ignoring his existence for the duration of the exam. She hoped he could be professional (highly doubtful) and do the same for her, but she did not bet on it. As the man seemed overly volatile ever since he arrived - and didn’t it call to question what happened on his preliminary tests - Chuu had to keep her presence low, not liking perspectives of having to fight him. Another thing she hoped for - it wasn’t a far-fetched guess why he took the exam, so she preferred thinking it would be too bothersome for him to take the exam yet again. What was more likely than both of the above, was for him to kill some rando to cool down. Preferably far from them. 

Argh, she still could not believe she forgot Go Won’s warnings!..

“What were your tests?” She asked in the settled pause, as Choerry run out of examinees to talk about. “We were comparing ours and what we heard of other possible routes, trying to come up with other similar routes and overall costs for the preliminary tests.” Chuu leaned closer, adding clarification for a sudden subject change in conspirological whisper. “You have no idea how dull it is here.”

With a giggle, HeeJin complied. “Well, probably the first thing that was a test, was a train,” Chuu sent Choerry a meaningful stare, “it didn’t fully stop at the station, so we had to catch up to it.” It was Choerry’s turn to plaster a fake smile and bulge eyes out, staring intensely at Chuu. “There was also no actual stop, the slowest we got was on the slope of the mountain, before radio announced that the next stop would be in a city three stops away from the needed one... What are you two doing?”

Turning away from scowling at victorious-looking Choerry, who was raising eyebrows high and posturing as if she waited for a praise, Chuu explained, “Both of us - and some others whose stories we heard - had a major travel means as their first test. She,” Chuu accusedly pointed straight at Choerry, almost leaning in the direction, “got a ship that had, you know, a little bumpy voyage, while I got an aircraft that fucking crashed!” She held a pause to underline the irritation she felt over the difference of the two tests. “So, thinking about other logical ones, buses and trains, we agreed that the first ones can be used in different ways, but trains, they are on tracks, you can’t just leave them standing there or subtly loop. I suggested, Hunter Association could afford to crash one or two, as a more serious test, while Choerry believed that was not sensible at all!” she rolled her eyes, annoyed. “As if crashing an _aircraft_ is sensible!”

HeeJin snickered. “Well, I wouldn’t call my trip very sensible either. Slopes were very steep, it was difficult to not just tumble down.” Her expression turned somber. “A couple of applicants broke their necks there. You weren’t far from a crash, I suppose. Then we had to find our way to the Coluc City, but none of us wanted to stay in a group so we dispersed and I headed towards it by myself, before finding a village. Locals told me there was a predicament and asked for assistance in the search for a missing child, indicating that others, who already passed, refused to help. They said the kid last headed in the direction we came from...”

Chuu nodded along, not indulging in the theatrics with Choerry anymore, mutual voiceless decision to argue over whose guesses were closer afterwards. She was lazily softly kicking the pipe with her heels, when one tall man squinted in annoyance at their group. She caught his attention, making an eye contact, and grinned at him. He was tall, over two meters for sure, carrying what looked like a giant wooden hammer. He scoffed, baring his teeth, but looked away after a couple seconds of staring at her unflinching smile.

She hummed, returning to her familiar absentminded smile, making a cursory glance around, seeing if any other new examinee disliked their existence before facing HeeJin again.

The crowd around them had not changed much, some newcomers filtering in, listening up on any conversations around. Which was not many, people mostly keeping to themselves, only glancing at each other. Except from a couple instances, like their group, Tonpa and some sort of gathering back in the hall, few said more than a couple words, no doubt seeing others as a competition. It was probably rough - being them. 

She was keeping attention on the newcomers, just in case, but most were not worth attention. Most would be lucky to have a chance next year or were not as notably higher level above everyone else to really pay attention to them.

A barely-audible ping came from the elevator, notifying the arrival of another competitor. Chuu absentmindedly cast a glance to the entrance before snapping to reality and doing a double-take.

* * *

She pinned a tag with number 390 written on it on her outer long oversized t-shirt, almost a dress in its length, while she nonchalantly looked around. Not shy about her curiosity, HyunJin gathered her first impression of the real contestants, looking at their physique and weapons, while the front row of the crowd answered in kind, likewise unbothered by subtleties. As she made her first step forward, they looked away, but kept attention on her in the corner of their eyes. Moving deeper into the crowd, she concluded that this would be tough - examinees here looked more aggressively relaxed, muscles being better balanced than others on her way here, who seemed to only care to develop visible muscle mass.

She was ready, though. All last-minute preparations were done in the elevator, a two-minute ride used to braid her hair in two tight braids, as the last thing she needed was her hair getting in her eyes. With a recently accidentally cut lock on the right side, it was more than likely to happen if she chose to have a ponytail. She also checked one last time that her backpack was tightly secured, as was her waist pouch, hidden under a spacious cream t-shirt. Back home, on her last trip to the city before leaving for the exam, she thought for a while over wearing something more solid, like a jacket or something. In the end HyunJin decided to go with what she usually wore, including a skin-tight top, black sport knee-length leggings and fast-to-dry high-quality sneakers that she had to save for. Twice. The first pair was durable and exactly what she needed while not crossing the price range she was willing to pay for shoes, and she liked them for a solid month before they got chewed on by leprechaun lizards. The said oversized t-shirt was from a sturdier fabric than her original one and had served well back home - she had no intentions of fixing something that was not broken.

HyunJin left the area directly near the elevator and walked deeper in the hall, looking for a spot she can wait in. Other examinees were not much different from the ones close to the entrance, but some of them stood in pairs or decided to sit on the ground. As she passed them, she felt their attention, alert but not hostile.

Before she could walk further than halfway to the opposite wall, her eye caught a movement near one of the walls. A girl sat there on a pipe, waving at her. When their eyes met, the girl excitedly said something to the side and motioned to her invitingly.

That was intriguing. The girl seemed nonchalant over gaining attention from some other people around and even looked comfortable in her overlooking spot. Curious, HyunJin headed towards her.

She came to a clearing of three, two other girls also looking at her with unhidden interest. None of them looked like they belonged here, sticking out by virtue of a combination of being teenagers and wearing bright clothes. The one on the pipe didn’t even have a backpack, instead having a boxy bag over another shoulder, about eight inches in the side.

“Hi,” greeted her girl with purple hair and eyes, tag reading 81. She clasped her hands behind her back, rocking on her heels, two high ponytails swaying, “my name is Choerry.”

“Hello,” answered HyunJin, glancing back at the girl, who jumped down, tag 10 visible on her short poncho-like short cloak. “I’m HyunJin.”

“HeeJin,” nodded another, with a sable on her hip and tagged 234. She had black eyes and hair, long locks hanging free, a few inches above her waist.

“And I am Chuu!” The overseeing girl approached, putting hands on HyunJin’s shoulders, and looking dead in the eye, borderline uncomfortably close. Chuu was staring intently, almost searching for something in her face and eyes.

“Hello, Chuu,” raised an eyebrow HyunJin, unsure of a boldly tactile girl. She had red hair gathered in low ponytails and pastel orange eyes. HyunJin also felt a pang of surprise as, now being so close from her, she found out that the girl had barely any scent. This was unexpected, she only met a couple of people who deliberately chose to use scentless products in her entire life.

But she was at the starting site of a Hunter exam. HyunJin supposed she should have expected that. She inhaled again, focusing on her sense of smell,memorizing it. Interesting. 

Even more, on top of having no easily picked scent, Chuu was the tenth to arrive, how long ago was that, did the order of arrival matter? She would guess no, as the routes varied. HyunJin thought for a moment before deciding it wasn’t overly unsettling for her. This only proved to her that people here took the challenge of the exam seriously.

Chuu spent seven long seconds searching for something in her eyes before nodding, seemingly content, and stepping back, returning HyunJin her personal space.

“Do you happen to know how long it will take until the beginning?” asked HyunJin, interested in what kind of schedule Hunter Exam ran on.

Choerry shook her head, but offered her thought. “Eh, usually it starts around dawn or early morning. There were sometimes first phases that required them to be conducted during nighttime, but it is certainly not the case this time - as a rule, they give the participants around five to seven hours to gather before closing registration.”

It was almost five thirty in the morning.

HyunJin frowned and turned to Chuu, deciding to voice the question stuck in her head. “What time did you arrive at?”

“Twenty or so minutes after midnight.”

A ping and, in a couple seconds, loud “Ano!..” sounded from the elevator, her attention focusing on that for a moment. In passing, she noted it sounded like a child’s voice. So she, a teenager, was not that standing out. Good to know. What kind of a child would take the exam? “That was a long time ago. What have you been doing all this time here?”

Chuu dramatically rolled her eyes. “I _know_! It is a dreadfully dull place to wait in, too! Thankfully, Choerry arrived before I could go insane with boredom,” Chuu gently elbowed Choerry in her side, but the other girl sidestepped it, “since, as you can imagine, majority of the examinees here are standoffish and really, _really_ not up for a friendly chat. It is enough to walk up to them and open your mouth to get glared at! And, besides them, well, this place dreadfully bland.”

HyunJin agreed. She was unused to being so deep underground, for one, and, secondly, this hall appeared to be purely utilitarian, no one cared to make it a little bit more hospitable. Dull grey walls and ceiling, built from blocks of concrete and floor, rough and uneven, were lit by the line of lamps in the middle of the ceiling and little wall lamps, all of them spaced out and rather dull. It provided enough light to see, even read, if needed, but the hall was far from being well-lit. Wide pipes and cables snaked along the walls, made sure to nail down that the room was here for a purpose different than to be aesthetically pleasing.

She cocked her head, musing over her last thought. “Why would they build this hall so deeply?”

“No idea,” replied Chuu as the other two shook their heads. ”But, since you asked, tell you what: the wall further back actually seems to have vertical seams in it on each side, floor to ceiling.”

So it could slide up or down? Which meant this hall might be a tunnel. That actually would make sense. Somewhat. Where did it go and why so deep? It was unlikely to be for the restaurant itself, but there was some important building close to it, maybe the tunnel went from there? Underground structure? She looked back to the wall with the elevator, searching for something, signs of another moving wall, when a scream full of shock and pain tore through the air, startling her.

All present snapped their heads towards the source, where closest to it people instinctively stepped back, forming a wide circle around a bald wild-shouldered tall man in a long cape.The scene was close enough for HyunJin to see what was happening in detail. He was standing on his knees, mouth wide open, only sounds coming from him were of distress. Not surprising, as the man, with a paled face and eyes full of fear, watched his arms slowly fall apart in petal-like slices. Starting from fingertips and creeping up, now nearly up to his elbows, his arms were dissipating into thin air.

In the otherwise dead silence, a deep voice sounded. “How peculiar. Now you see them, now you don’t.” HyunJin’s attention snapped towards the talking person, spotting him immediately, the only one amused by the situation. The man opened his arms in a “what can you do” gesture. “No smoke and mirrors here, ladies and gentlemen.” He lowered his voice to a low almost-purr, but in the silence of the hall, everyone heard him perfectly clear. “You should be more careful. Next time you bump into someone, it would do you well to apologize.”

With that, he turned around, leisurely walking away from the terrified man. Applicants divided before him without a word.

The man was tall and well-built, with wild pink hair. Wearing ice-blue clothes that resembled jester’s look, with puffy shoulders, a pattern of suits on the top and painted face. He gave an unforgettable impression. Every cell in her body screeched out that she should watch out.

HyunJin forcefully turned back to the group she found herself in. Chuu shifted beside her and Choerry caught her tense gaze.

“That was Hisoka. Tonpa called him Hisoka the Magician, the most dangerous contestant here. Seems like he was correct. Try to stay away from him,”said Choerry with a small reassuring smile.

HyunJin nodded as Chuu dropped a new alarming piece of information, causing tension in her stomach to intensify. “It is his second attempt. He was disqualified the previous year after nearly killing an examiner.”

“Scaaaaary,” whispered Choerry. Coupled with her smile, it was difficult to believe the girl was as intimidated by Hisoka as HyunJin was.

“He was allowed to try again?” asked HeeJin, looking properly alarmed.

Choerry carelessly shrugged. “Hunter License gives nice benefits and anyone, literally anyone, can make an attempt.. Wait, no, sorry! That was a lie. People holding governing positions or having direct potential to - like royalty - are prohibited from taking the exam, but everyone else is free to do so. I keep constantly forgetting about them! Each year there are different examiners, and you can pass them if you are qualified enough, but nobody does a morality test, that is way too subjective. Preliminary tests filter out complete scum or hopeless ones but that is about it.” Choerry appeared to be unbothered by implications of what she just said. “After all, Hunter Association themselves aren’t a rigid unit, and you meet all sorts of people! And they are very secretive, so not much is actually known about them besides the warning to not see them as being coworkers to each other.”

HeeJin frowned lightly at that, worrying her lip, visibly diving in her thoughts.

Deciding to think about that later, HyunJin turned to Choerry. “You sound like you know many Hunters.”

“A couple,” admitted Choerry. She opened her mouth to continue, but suddenly she made an alarmed noise and stood on tiptoes, putting arms in a cross, raising them above her head. HyunJin looked in that direction and saw a fat man near the most mismatched group she saw here, more than the girls were. A tall man in a dark blue suit, teenager in what looked like tribal clothes and an honest to God child with a fishing pole. All of them were holding cans. Chuu near her also started waving hands and, after a brief pause, when HeeJin found what was going on, began making “abort” motions above her head. Blond teenager saw them and stopped lifting the can, frowning, but the other two brought them to their mouths. Chuu growled and slapped her forehead in exasperation. HyunJin frowned. If she understood what was happening correctly, they just drank something, given them by someone untrustworthy? Were the drinks poisoned? Suddenly, the boy spluttered and let everything he just had in his mouth to pour out, saying something with apologetic expression. Tall man followed his suit, spitting out what he got. HeeJin and Chuu sighed with relief, returning to the conversation and HyunJin followed their lead, but paused. There was someone who nearly killed an examiner the previous year and cut one examinee's arms in this one. Now there was another person, who tried to poison participants. A quick glance showed that the man was bowing to the trio in an apology.

“Who was that?” she asked HeeJin, pulling her out of her thoughts.

“Tonpa, he attempted to make each of us drink his canned juice too.” HeeJin looked at the direction. “He is rather intrusive with feigned friendliness. Targeted several others and those, who drank the juice, run to the bathrooms and are yet to return.”

HyunJin hummed, satisfied with the answer, before blinking, her nose tickling as if before sneezing. She cringed on the inside, but the feeling passed.

One last glance at the mismatched group at the entrance, she returned to the conversation about Hunters, intent on learning more. She wondered if the information Choerry got was more legitimate than stories circulating on the forums.

Unfortunately, it turned out that the conversation, if it could now be called that, strayed away while she was in thought. Chuu was trying to weasel out answers from Choerry, who kept more or less intentionally ignoring the questions. Instead, she focused on one specific unnamed Hunter, going on and on talking about the work she did at sea, dreamily staring at the ceiling.

Soon, Chuu gave up on getting the answer she wanted, the girl began asking about absolute nonsense. Her questions had no logic, the girl clearly deciding to amuse herself if Choerry didn’t want to. Both were having fun.

As two one-sided conversations spiraled further and further out of hand, HeeJin snickered, breaking into giggles, and HyunJin felt the tension from the last couple minutes leave her too.

* * *

A loud shrill filled the room and the wall opposite of the entrance began to lift with a rumbling, almost completely drowning out the alarm. All around them participants, who decided to sit while waiting, rose to their feet. Fake wall revealed the source of the noise: at the center of the road there stood a man in a violet suit, his curled lavender hair standing out against a poorly lit tunnel behind him - it was stretching as far as the eye could see, pipes and cables and all. It was lit even worse than this section. What caught Choerry’s attention in the man himself was that, under an even curlier mustache, he seemingly had no mouth. Whenever she got a chance she would check if it was really absent or was it just a trick of light.

When the wall rose fully, man turned the shrilling alarm off and put it away, the second he spent doing it being the quietest since Choerry got here, this one uninterrupted by any whimpers or rustling.

"Welcome to the 287th Hunter Exam,” spoke the man, mustache twitching along the words. This did prove that he had a mouth, and Choerry sighed in light disappointment. “As of now, registration is closed and the Exam will begin. This way, please." He turned around and stepped into the tunnel with an unusual gait - it made him look like one of the moving wooden toys she played with in her childhood. It made her briefly wonder why he chose it.

“Just there’s no mistake,” his voice cut through a disunited rumble of the footsteps of the following applicants, “the Hunter Exam is very rigorous and may cost your life. If you lack the necessary ability - too bad. If you’re unlucky - again, too bad. And examinees are not above sabotaging each other, as you saw. If you’re okay with that, then you are welcome to continue. Otherwise, turn around - this is your last chance to leave.” Elevator behind them opened its doors with a ding, offering an exit. As expected, noone made a move to turn around. “Still with me? Good. You four hundred applicants may enter the first phase.”

Choerry was almost hopping as she walked, probably seeming overenthusiastic for other participants, - finally! She would finally get her license! God, she waited for so long! Choerry had no shade of a doubt that she would pass, even the possibility of it brushed aside with a scoff. The only way she would fail was if she tripped over someone like Hisoka in a truly unfortunate fashion, but she was better than that. Magician or no, he was a nen-user who had his bloodthirst and hunger blossomed in a beacon that was difficult to ignore. Even when he was the calmest, his presence was felt, unhidden. She wondered whether he was usually like that or was this a special occasion.

And Choerry was just a little unassuming girl with an indoctrinated person’s output, just as usual. Nothing to see here. No attention to catch, no harm to do. As long as she was herself, she was bound to be overlooked by the likes of Hisoka.

So was Chuu, at that matter, but the redhead was too confrontational to actually be believable. 

Gradually, ahead of her, the footsteps became footfalls, louder and more frequent. With yelps, other participants around them began to quicken their pace, too, until the whole crowd was running at a comfortable marathon speed. Great! If just running was their first phase, it would be a piece of cake! She can even continue to chat with the girls for it’s duration! 

A glance to the side proved that Chuu was thinking the same thing. HeeJin, though, looked contemplative. Choerry tried to catch eye contact but the girl just stared ahead.

“I am Satotz, your examiner for the first phase of the exam, as well as your guide to the second phase,” introduced himself the Hunter and Choerry dug through her memory, but was unable to recall his name. She was fairly sure she was never told of him, which was not really surprising. 

“Second?” exclaimed a loudmouthed shinobi, who previously shared his secret mission with everyone who would like to listen and people in three meters radius, who did not. “But what’s about the first?”

“This, what else? I told you the exam had begun, did I not? You’re now taking it. All you have to do is keep up with me. Simple as that.” A wave of murmurs rolled through the crowd. She saw HeeJin frown in a corner of her eye.

“For how long do we have to run?” pondered HeeJin barely audible.

“Who knows?” she answered the rhetorical question, giving the girl a supportive smile. HeeJin was no wimp or skilless, that much was clear by the fact that she got to the starting line of the Hunter Exam on her first try. But her getting the license on the first try? Doubtful.

Still, the girl was very nice and Choerry wanted to befriend her. She already decided to help a little in an emergency, a little push if HeeJin needed some motivation or a helping hand in getting to safety, if she was unwilling to continue. Same went for HyunJin, obviously. The girl was not all that talkative, but charming nonetheless.

Just because her best friends avoided making friends on their exams and were severely bored on them did not mean she was accepting to be bored too for its whole duration.  
She was going to both have fun and become an official Hunter, easy!

Helping the girls was not a handicap for her. “Don’t worry, probably just a couple hours!” she cheered up HeeJin. The girl nodded.

Almost as if also hearing HeeJin’s earlier question, Satotz added a short note, not turning to the participants. “Where we are going, and when we’ll get there, I can’t say. To find out… just follow, follow, follow.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooooo, fun important talk about updates. Major events and plotlines are already outlined, and chapter plans are now two arcs ahead. How am I going to do this - I'm making this in arcs. I draft, write and start editing an arc, I start posting it. Then goes a pause before I finish those three things for the next arc, rinse, repeat.  
> The first arc is already fully written, but edited only partially (one-fifth of it).  
> For all less formal interactions, [here is link to this fic's twitter](https://twitter.com/garlicTangerine)


	2. In the tunnel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some chapters have more of one character's perspective, than of the other's. I try to balance it, but those chaotic children just love being the center of attention

Loud footfalls of hundreds of people filled the tunnel, no voices heard amidst the noise - in the two hours passed since the beginning, all conversations, few as they were, gradually died down as everyone concentrated on preserving their energy. The crowd now became dispersed, examinees evenly spaced out, leaving plenty of space between. Sometimes, someone would move to the other part of the crowd for whatever reason, but mostly everyone kept to their space. 

As expected, applicants were holding up well, none of them withdrawing or even showing signs of exhaustion yet, the only sign of passing kilometres being sweat stains some examinees sported. HeeJin stared at one of such backs. A large spot of darkened fabric caused her to involuntarily thin her lips each time her gaze landed on it, a reminder of her own growing tiredness. She, too, removed all extra layers of clothes, putting her large beanie and coat in the backpack. HeeJin was not fatigued, not yet, but the lack of knowledge of how long they had to run was putting more stress on her than she expected, mental strain adding to her physical state.

For a while, she kept somewhat one-sided conversation with the girls, mostly listening Choerry and Chuu’s stories, occasionally intertwining with HyunJin’s. HeeJin was having a rising suspicion that half of those were made up. Possibly more. But now they settled into relative silence, only sometimes broken by HyunJin’s questions about interesting weaponry or possibly meaningful tattoos on other examinees, which Choerry eagerly answered. Chuu spoke up whenever she had something interesting to add, but mostly the girl also kept silent.

HeeJin herself drifted away from actively listening, only occasionally paying attention to what was happening around. Not that the topics weren’t informative, quite the opposite, but she was trying to save all her focus for running as efficiently as she could. Granted, HeeJin did not know how, but her focusing on her breathing and footsteps seemed to work, whether it was true or just an autosuggestion.

An elbow to her side tore HeeJin from her thoughts, a curse escaping through clenched teeth - it was a painful hit, almost guaranteeing to bruise there later. She glared at Chuu, massaging the spot, as the girl blinked innocently, and, now that she got HeeJin’s attention, pointed to the side. 

HeeJin followed with her eyes and gasped.

Drowning out her surroundings, she missed an approach of an unusual sound, but now she couldn’t not notice it - amidst all participants, a white-haired kid rode on a skateboard, hands shoved into pockets. HeeJin’s mind went back to the rule that stated examinees could bring whatever they wanted, but she didn’t think someone would take that as an invitation for something _that_ impractical (although, weirdly, a skateboard found its use on the Hunter Exam, however weirdly it was sounding to her). He was slowing down, now almost aligning with them and the redhead was enthusiastically motioning at the skateboard.

Chuu leaned closer, loudly whispering. “Now _that_ is smart!” 

Loudly enough for the kid to hear her, apparently, as the boy slanted an indifferent eye at them.

Chuu, unperturbed by the attention, gave him two thumbs up and a bright smile. “Love your skateboard! Great thinking ahead!”

His eyebrows twitched.

Inwardly cringing at Chuu’s choice of phrasing and gesturing for what she assumed was a genuine praise, HeeJin wanted to add a couple of less impersonal words to make the statement less viewable as condescension, but the boy was already moving away, no longer even looking in their direction. 

“Thanks,” he dropped, deliberately slowing, sliding between the runners and behind them, out of sight.

Chuu sent a grin to HeeJin and put some distance between them once again. HeeJin shook her head, slightly exasperated at the exchange and made an extra deep inhale, attempting to plant herself back in her concentration. An outraged yelp rang behind them, from the direction boy off to, a loud voice accusing someone of cheating.

Chuu snorted next to her. Unable to hear what exactly commotion was about (but having a pretty good idea) HeeJin rolled her eyes and once again focused on her movements.

* * *

Having to consciously stop herself from humming, Choerry observed other examinees, some of whom were running much more mechanically than they were at the start. Their eyes were more focused, movements set in a pattern they were determined to keep even past their limits. Heavy footfalls filled the tunnel, unified in a disharmonious endless noise, no voices heard anywhere. 

Applicants went from “running unknown distance” to “running a marathon” mode.

As Choerry kept to their group, absence of more advanced examinees running nearby kept her attention aimless. She was stuck between looking at the bland applicants and silently watching the girls, as any conversation with either HyunJin or HeeJin was impossible now.

Well, not impossible, but inadvisable. HyunJin’s last question was an hour ago, the girl now deep in concentration, just like HeeJin fell in earlier. 

Regrettably, Choerry had also rapidly approached and breezed past the point where any light-far-from-identifying-or-personal discussions with Chuu felt amusing. For the time being, they both stopped their fruitless attempts of solving each other. Until they got further into the exam or to a more secluded location, there were no topics to discuss for them - while some of the people around will just die, the majority will fail the usual way and come back into the world. All of her besties chided her time and time again about talking on sensitive topics in precarious positions among curious ears - and there were some crowds that were safe to talk in, but this one was not one of those - until she finally developed a better habit of keeping track of what she was saying. 

So, with Chuu there was no possibility for chatting either, not until they got to a more isolated location.

They won’t be having any deep heart-to-heart anyway, mutually too wary of each other.

Choerry looked to her right, where other girls were running.

While Chuu looked like she just started a little jog, bored out of her mind, it was obvious that HeeJin and HyunJin were growing tired. Being objective, both of them were holding up better than a regular person would, already running over the three-hour mark, more than forty kilometres away from the start. While both of them were above average, they still were noncombatants.

Well, noncombatants might be a wrong term here, taking HeeJin’s sabre into account. Civilians were also a wrong word - God knew there were no civilians on this exam. Inexperienced, over their head, dead end folks, but no ordinary people.

Which did not mean that being a civilian was inherently a diminishing thing! Or defining. She herself was from an almost-pacifistic family, though that did not mean she was one now. But HeeJin was a _civilian_ civilian.

So was HyunJin, she was sure, given that the girl did not display any identifiable marks of a martial arts school, not even subtle hints, not in the clothes, not in the way she moved. Very few visible scars also told nothing. Choerry was of an opinion that the girl had close to none of the proper training. Maybe some light guidance, but not much more.

Even so, HyunJin had a good fortitude. Not sweating, she kept her footsteps light - granted, civilian-light, but still! - brows furrowed in concentration and staring somewhere ahead of her. Choerry had to give it to the girl: she was faring better than half of the applicants!

On the other hand, there was HeeJin.

Choerry moved closer to the girl.

“Hey, how are you?” HeeJin’s breathing was labored, effort being put in keeping her movement's pattern. Her steps were becoming sloppier, but she kept the pace.

“I’m fine,” exhaled HeeJin, lying. Neither of them knew how much longer it was until the end of the first phase. They ran over forty kilometres by this point, sure, but it was nothing to a professional Hunter. None of the examinees have withdrawn yet.

She dropped the topic, letting HeeJin concentrate back on her running. 

Which became even slower after nine more kilometres, when HeeJin began lagging so much that she was now running in the tail of the crowd, both Choerry and HyunJin slowing down with her. 

The girl stopped completely after another five. 

Choerry stopped too and so did HyunJin, breathing heavily. Other examinees passed by, and soon they were standing alone, everpresent footsteps distancing.

HeeJin stood there, doubled over, panting loudly. Choerry eyed her appraisingly.

“Are you withdrawing?”

* * *

Question barely breaking through the fog, HeeJin weakly shook her head one time and the movement nearly made her crane to the side. A couple seconds passed.

“Do you want me to carry you?” Choerry asked from above, her even tone breaking through the noise in her head. If HeeJin felt better, she would be able to be grateful for the lack of any condescension or pity in her voice.

But she wasn’t - her vision swam, as did her head, pulsating pressure building in it for an hour, exhaustion finally getting the better of her now. She wordlessly shook her head again.

This was so hard! She felt drained, her limbs filled with lead. All of her praised stamina, and look who is the first to fail this exam! So much for being better than average. 

Should’ve known one had be truly exceptional to become a Hunter.

“Why not? You can rest for a while, then continue by yourself.”

She couldn't rely on others' help for this phase. If she can’t run with them, what will she do when she has to fight?

Something cold pushed against her cheek.

She slowly opened her eyes and saw in a blurred colours and shapes someone’s legs and two white blobs, one of which was pressed against her cheek.

HyunJin was standing near her, looking thoughtful. HeeJin shook her head slightly, but HyunJin kept standing there, pressing a water bottle pointedly.

Begrudgingly, she straightened, head spinning from the effort. She took the already opened bottle and made a small gulp of water.

And another one, feeling both dehydrated and like she was gonna puke at the same time.

“You did not come here on an exotic holiday,” said HyunJin after taking her bottle back. “You trained for it or else wouldn’t have run all the way up here at all. There was a goal you had in mind when applying.”

Of course she had a goal! So many. With a cornerstone - getting the Hunter license - failure to achieve which was a failure of all of them.

She was trying her best to get her freedom secured.

HeeJin slowly blinked. Right. “You are standing, meaning you are still able to dance,” her strict ballet teacher’s voice echoed in her head.

She gave no visible reaction and HyunJin firmly took her forearm. “Lets go,'' she said, pulling. “You can’t give up only three and a half hours into the exam.”

The girl jerked her stronger, causing HeeJin to stumble in surprise, catching herself from tripping over her legs and making a step forward to steady herself.

She felt a pressure on her shoulder, a hand sticking where it touched her sweaty skin, Choerry looking at her encouragingly. The girl gave her a couple pats before looking forward, starting to walk after the examinees.

For HeeJin this exam was not a choice between nearly equal outcomes. In the last month before the exam “Do or die” became her mantra. The alternative might be worse and she pushed away thoughts about it. (What was her family doing right now, she wondered.) Too much time spent on getting out. She _needed_ this license. Do her best or die.

She can do that.

With gargantuan effort, she made the next step, HyunJin still pulling her forward. Another step, another one and she was trotting. Her legs were screaming in protest, but she grit her teeth and willed herself to continue. It took her another dozen or two to reach the speed of the crowd again. HyunJin let go of her forearm but kept close, as well as Choerry, waiting for HeeJin to be ready to accelerate and catch up to other examinees. 

* * *

Next hour was only barely more eventful than previous ones. The juice-drinking man from the beginning, one in a suit, almost dropped out but caught a second wind. It was a loud affair. 

Another man, short and fat, clutching a laptop, _did_ stop at around an eighty-kilometer mark, also with a loud wail. Other than that, nothing happened. HyunJin also hasn't spotted Chuu ever since the former stayed on their spot when HeeJin was out of breath. It took them about forty minutes before getting back in the midst of it, but the girl was nowhere to be seen. HyunJin concluded that she likely moved somewhere to the front of the crowd in their absence.

The monotony of the marathon lulled HyunJin in an almost meditative state, nothing pulling her interest. So when a commotion far in the front happened, her mind instantly snapped towards it, trying to see between the participants and listening intently. Due to the distance and her height, she saw nothing, the only reactions she caught were of general surprise and disbelief, not alarmed or panicked.

Yelps came closer and closer, until they understood what was happening too.

Choerry whistled next to her. 

“You must be kidding me,” breathed out HeeJin next to her and HyunJin made a sound of agreement. 

Stairs. Long, seemingly just as endless as the tunnel they were running through for the past four and a half hours.

Who built this monstrosity? She could understand it before, the convenient and direct underground transportation for whatever. But stairs? How were the stairs a logical conclusion for this tunnel? HyunJin scrunched her nose. What a stupid waste.

This architectural monstrosity was rapidly approaching and running up was the only way to go.

Well. HyunJin forcefully breathed out. These stairs may be a sin of logic, but so was she.

She steeled herself and added a little spring in her step.

* * *

“Why are you wearing a business suit if you aren’t good enough for them?” Leorio’s focus straggled a bit, interrupting his silent fuming. There, to his right, looking relaxed and curious, ran one of those girls that kept chatting on and on a couple hours ago. He was certain he overheard their names. Uh, Shoe? No, that was certainly wrong. 

“What's your name, again?” he frowned slightly, keeping his volume lower than usual, not wishing to rile himself up for an argument. His second wind was limited and he was not a fool to let this girl help him find it sooner.

She smiled brightly. “Chuu!”

“None of your business, Chuu,” he said, hopefully conveying the “fuck off” notion loud and clear. The last thing he needed was a discussion of his looks, he had neither energy for it, nor patience. First reactions to his age and now this?! Seemed like everyone wanted to get on his nerves today. He was honestly expecting more from Gon - not from Kurapika, he might’ve turned out to be an actually decent person, but also rude as all hell - but Gon! Killua was whatever, definitely less polite than Kurapika and almost a stranger, no high expectations about him. But Gon! They were no longer friends after this. Leorio was clearly a teenager! 

Still coming to terms that his friends were apparently blind, some stranger’s nosy comments about his clothing irked him. Especially since she was even worse with her own choices! A goddamn dress? Girlie, have you thought about where you were going?

Even more, what that even was supposed to mean?! “Not good enough for it”? What the hell? Was she insulting him on purpose?

Whatever. He was absolutely not interested in chit-chat. Running, not talking.

Unfortunately, Chuu did not take the clue.

“But you aren’t used to it!” she half-argued, half-whined.

Leorio snarled. “Shut up! I want to hear nothing from someone who wore a dress to the Hunter Exam!”

Chuu groaned. “Why is everyone so fixated on it! It is not that weird. Come on. Shorts! They exist. I swear, nobody here ever talked to a single feminine _and_ physically active girl! Look, better freedom of movement, less pretentious, cute, good for any level of capabilities, dresses are great and suitable for any skill level. While other clothes, like suits, for example, will handicap you if you aren’t good enough,” she sent him a meaningful look.

“I am more than good enough,” her lack of social competency grated on him, the girl stubbornly spinning the conversation further no matter how cutting he was.

“You are currently shirtless,” pointed out Chuu, skeptically eyeing the tie, still around his neck, one of the ends flapping behind and the other stuck to his back. Still having “As I was saying” written in her stare, she looked at his torso and the tag, glued to his chest, hinting at the lack of shirt.

He was so done with everyone at this goddamn exam.

“And doing fine!”

Leorio was unable to not gape in incredulity when she honest-to-god pouted at him.

* * *

What a long staircase! It wasn’t even built in a straight line, serpentine like a snake, with no light at the end and, compared to the flat ground, the contestants were tiring much faster. Finally, after over eighty-five kilometers, there was a steady stream of failures. Exhausted participants, unable to force themselves to make another step up seemingly infinite stairs, fell and stayed there, the flow of the crowd avoiding them. Besides her. She was simply jumping over them, throwing off people running behind her, creating a bigger, than usual, distance behind her from the wary examinees.

But mostly doing it just to mix things up.

Choerry was in high spirits, outright humming one of new catchy g-pop* songs, proud of her new friends, both of them still running next to her. 

HeeJin was almost serene in her determined focus, so deep inside her own head, it would be cruel to shake her out of it. Given that she stopped once already, Choerry was not that eager to ruin her chances, the girl already was running for an hour past her limit. 

She seemed like a trained girl, but not purely in a combat-wise sense, now that she thought about it. True, HeeJin had a sable, and Choerry had no doubts the girl knew how to use it, hands selectively callused, with very few scars. But the way she ran… While her stamina was way better than average, her movements were painfully wasteful ever since the first phase began. She was inclined to think that HeeJin learned fencing as a sport, rather than a demand for her occupation.

But other from mastery of the sword, any other action skills were neglected. Even before the start of the first phase, the volume of her footsteps were betraying that, broadcasting her level to any attentive bystander. No, her stamina was either from other stamina-required sport or from her own dedicated practice.

Or an unconscious use of nen. You can never rule that one out.

Choerry gazed at figures of examinees running in front of her, thinking. 

HeeJin, without a doubt, was of a civilian background, she already went over it. But there was more than a simple life of a noncombatant. People on the exam generally separated in two groups: running towards something or running from it.

If HeeJin were to stop for good, she would offer her help again. The determination that carried her all this way was born from a deep place, one she somewhat recognized, blurry and fainter, but familiar from faces of her best friends. She knew she would insist on carrying her again, more persistently, if needed, until HeeJin agreed. Her perseverance was the only thing that mattered for Choerry to offer her help her again.

Admittedly, she was more interested in HyunJin’s capabilities. Frowning lightly, she was steadily moving with almost the same spirit she had in the beginning. Furthermore, HyunJin was only now showing visible signs of fatigue, a sheen of sweat on her face. Absence of training or not, she was going to finish on her own, Choerry was a hundred percent sure.

She would also bet, lets say, eighty grand on HyunJin’s nen-type. 

One song ending in her mind, Choerry started humming another.

She wanted to run ahead, maybe find someone to talk to, but decided to stay close to those two, just in case.

* * *

There was no tell who would pass, but Chuu was a very likely contender.

Earlier, when the phase just began, Kurapika paid attention to the girls’ chatter from time to time, coming to a conclusion that it was a wasteful management of their resources. Now it was apparent that he concluded wrong - Chuu wasn’t affected by the marathon in the slightest. He did not know about the other talkative one, with purple hair, as the group seemed to separate, but the redhead running with them was brimming with energy.

For the last couple minutes, Chuu was poking at Leorio’s dwindling patience, initiating a conversation exclusively out of sheer boredom, it seemed. She didn’t need to make pauses mid-sentences to inhale and, as much as he could be sure in dim lights, an expected sheen of sweat was absent. Moreover, her knitted elbow-high gloves, that were an obvious first thing to take off to lessen the heating from exercise, were still on.

No, Chuu might’ve as well stood in one place all this time.

What kind of training would develop stamina to such a level? What kind of life would require it?

Was she a dangerous criminal or a hard-working, but honest, fighter? 

Leaving other girls behind, was it pragmatism or selfishness?

As Leorio was beginning to fume, he decided to participate in the conversation, if only to save his friend from exhausting himself on meaningless banter, in case he was unable to get anything of substance out of the girl.

“Weren’t you one of those girls who warned about the juice? Thank you for that.” 

Chuu’s attention turned to him, expression brightening seeing that someone was willing to help with the tedium of the marathon.

Leorio turned to him, confused. 

“You haven’t noticed,” he said to the prospective medic, “but she and her friends signaled against drinking that juice.”

Leorio frowned. “What?”

Chuu slowed down and ran from Leorio’s side to his. “There were some laxatives in it. Nothing criminal, just a little inconvenience, costing a year,” she looked Kurapika in the eyes, chipper. “But your welcome.”

He nodded. Only half of the gratitude was for the warning about the drug. The other was for opening his eyes for a potential deceit from friendly-approaching examinees, that was a necessary awakening.

“Was there someone who warned you?” One of the other girls?

“Nope.”

A beat of silence.

“Did you taste the laxative and spit it out?” he decided to specify.

“Ha, no, my sense of taste is not _that_ strong! I just saw others race to the bathroom.”

“You drank it? Are you immune to poisons?” raised eyebrows Leorio.

“Nope, I just don’t take drinks from strangers on the deadliest exam in the world.”

Kurapika winced. Point. 

He was berating himself about that for a while, a resurgence of his naivete, that kept returning no matter how much time he spent in the outside world.

Did the attention and warmth he received from Gon and Leorio caused all his caution to fly away? To the point that anyone friendly enough to him seemed like a decent person? Or anyone in the context of Gon, with his intuition, trusting them? Both were bad reasons.

He was sure he wasn’t that trusting after he just left the village this time, refusing food and drink whenever offered by fellow travelers. Maybe homesickness was getting to him, desiring to see kindness in strangers where he should be on a high alert.

He only had to wait a little more, until the end of the exam.

“I, too, thought you had poison immunity there for a second,” maneuvered Kurapika to the best of his abilities, “seeing how you aren’t tired.”

“Oh, no, I just have good stamina,” said Chuu, not a shade of boasting in her voice.

“ _Good_ ,” huffed to his right Leorio.

“‘Good’ doesn’t encapsulate it well enough,” said Kurapika, not looking away from Chuu.

“Hmmm,” she pushed her tightened lips upwards. “Well, it is not out of the ordinary within my friends? I guess it would be...” she mumbled the last part, the ending almost inaudible. Kurapika did not read lips very well and missed how she ended the sentence. “Do _you_ have a ‘good stamina’?” she earnestly asked Kurapika.

Leorio swore under his breath.

He stared at her with incomprehension. Were the standards of Chuu’s life too high or Kurapika’s too low? “Yes,” he slowly said. “I do. Anyone getting up to this moment has a good stamina.”

Chuu looked ahead of her, humming in thought. So did Kurapika.

Maybe from her point of view Leorio’s attire _was_ absurd. Admittedly, he, too, thought that Leorio’s suit was a show of arrogance when they first met. Kurapika had to fight in a full suit, once, and the only thing he got out of that experience, besides the payment and ruined set of pricey clothing, was that suits were cumbersome, only used for uniformity and to give air of respectability, usually unwarranted.

He opted for staying in his clan’s clothes for almost any kind of job since then, whether it was to be accomplished by himself or as a team, he did not care.

He listened into Leorio’s heavy breathing to his right and complete silence to his left. He looked from the corner of his eye at her, carefully watching her movements.

Was the freedom for activity the only reason for her own attire? He had doubts, leaning towards a combination of personal preference and masking her skill level. He had no evidence about the second part, but both of them underestimating her from the moment they saw made him wonder.

Again, if it was just a personal taste, then it did not mean anything, but if it _was_ a distraction, then to what extent?

Chuu, as if feeling his attention, made eye contact, arching an eyebrow.

Kurapika looked away.

He was too hung up on the few minuscule bits of information and a bundle of suspicions.

There were really only two paths for Kurapika to take. He could either ignore her altogether and pursue the original plan of getting the Hunter license and getting both privileges and job opportunities using it; or he could continue to be attentive of Chuu and, depending on his observations, try to forge a connection with her. 

If she was of low morals, he needed to drop any acquaintance with her. The last contact he needed was to bandits of unknown motives and principles.

But if she was just a fighter or someone gone clean…

Regrettable, the option of asking her for her reason for taking the Exam was off the table, since he wouldn’t be able to offer an equal exchange of open answers that he wanted from her.

The best-case scenario if Chuu was an accomplished but humane mercenary, so that she was underworld-savvy, but did not pose danger to his clan in case she was to pry into his background or he slipped. 

Such a type of mercenary was a rare and hard to distinguish kind of bird. He knew, he looked for those on his jobs.

And, basically, those were what Hunters have been.

Which meant that the only thing he got, for the time being, were questions, as subtle as he could.

“How long do you have to train to get to such a level?” he faced her again.

“Well,” she chewed her lip. “I don’t remember, when I began, so, roughly, fifteen years?”

Kurapika frowned. Fifteen? 

“How old are you?”

“Nineteen.”

He almost tripped once again in the same ten minutes.

No way. She did _not_ look nineteen!

A realization hit him. She was the same age as Leorio.

He snuck a glance to the side, eyeing his friend. Leorio, in his turn, looked at Chuu and caught his gaze. Leorio scowled furiously at him and Kurapika snapped his attention back to the stairs.

“So. You started your training at four?” tried Kurapika, sounding more off balance than he thought he would. He was disoriented not only by her deceiving looks, but also the fact that any heavy training, that started at four, basically stood in the territory of child soldiers. 

“Something like that?” ignored his intonation Chuu. ”I said, I don’t remember for sure when it started. And, anyway, is not like I am actively training up to this day, there is no progress anymore. Or, at least, none that is noticeable.”

He opened mouth for his next question, but paused. He was not the most suave conversationalist, too brash, but this one he had to formulate correctly. He frowned, carefully phrasing what he wanted to ask.

“What’d’ya even need so much strength for?!” asked Leorio through gritted teeth.

Kurapika’s eyes went wide for a moment, lips pressing together. Way to-

“I am a mercenary.”

His head whipped towards her.

_She just answered?_

More importantly: what kind of mercenary was trained from age of _four_?

Was she from a clan of mercenaries? He knew those existed, came dangerously close with one of those previously, but knew nothing of its inner workings.

Would such a clan risk one of them getting right under the Association’s nose? In theory, if they fail, the member could be easily snatched away for questioning. Not like Chuu was likely to fail, but still, would they?

He stopped that thought right there: it was only in the case she was currently telling the truth. While child soldier theory was nauseating, it was still on the table, as a most likely one.

Chuu gave him nothing to confirm any of his suspicions, she gave nothing to disprove anything. He squinted at her briefly.

Until he learned more, he couldn’t make any decisions. Until that, he had to pay close attention to both her and himself, keeping his tendency to find friction with everyone in check.

He was content to let the conversation die out, when Leorio went up ahead and scoffed. “A mercenary!..”

Kurapika was about to turn and glare at him, but Chuu merely repeated sunnily. “Yep! Your friendly mercenary co-examinee!”

Leorio frowned, but, to Kurapika’s relief, abstained from any further comments.

* * *

“Light!” rang out a shout from the front. Chuu focused back ahead, raising her head. Indeed, they were reaching something, maybe even an exit! She hoped it was an exit. This tunnel was dreadfully bland and neither girls back down the stairs were any fun, currently, nor her ongoing company was any better, since they fell down into silence half an hour ago.

“Okay, boys. Leorio, Kurapika, thank you for your company, it was lovely. See you later,” she chirped and hastened her step, weaving between other examinees, wishing to be done with this tunnel.

She emerged into a dimmed sunlight a couple seconds later, leaving all others far behind. “Skyyy!” she screamed upward, bending her back with both arms thrown up, facing thick white fog. “Whoow!” she cheered at the top of her lungs, spooking an unseen flock of birds in the distance, that began to loudly flap their wings.

Staring at her, there were three people outside. Just as immaculate in his costume and mustache hairdo as he was in the start, hands clasped behind his back, Satotz was standing further down the hill, turning to her with both eyebrows high. Besides him, two young boys walked lower down the hill, themselves only recently having emerged from the tunnel. The white skateboard one and green juice kids finished the marathon first (she was fairly sure she overheard them calling each other as Gon and Killua). Gon waved at her as she started walking towards them, while Killua looked like he was torn between a suspicious squint and a scowl. Tough luck, buddy, she wanted a talking company and Gon seemed like someone who would deliver.

Not to mention that neither of them seemed tired at all, which was highly concerning, to say the least.

“So who won?” she asked, plopping down on the ground on the spot with enough grass. Gon, seeing her sit, did the same.

Opting to stay on his feet, Killua, deciding on his mien, scowled at her. “Eavesdropping is rude.”

“Mister Satotz said it was a draw,” responded Gon to her question somewhat sullenly, as Chuu seriously mouthed “It is” to Killua.

“Well, if it helps,” (“It doesn’t,” grumbled Killua), “you still were faster than any other contestant,” tried to cheer them up Chuu, but Gon groaned, crossing his legs and leaning back on his arms.

“But it is not the same! The loser had to pay for dinner, now we will just have to split a bill!” 

Chuu hummed in understanding. That was a real loss she could empathize, having partake in such contests a lot. God knows, there is nothing more bottomless than a child’s stomach who had violently arduous training daily.

“I don’t see any important structure or location here,” looked around Chuu. “Are we done with the first phase or?..”

“Mister Satotz said that there was more,” agreed Gon. Suddenly, his face lit up. Still sitting, he nearly bounced upright. “I’m Gon! This is Killua,” he motioned at the still standing kid, beaming.

She answered with her own bright smile. “I am Chuu! Nice to meet you two!” 

“You arrived here fast,” spoke up Killua, looking less unfriendly than before. Still disheveled in his attitude, but no longer glaring daggers. She made a glance at Gon before returning her attention to Killua. “Weren’t you far behind?”

“No, not as far as you think. Besides, you have no room to talk!” Chuu sent them a meaningful look. “Neither of you were even slightly out of breath.”

Gon laughed, scratching the back of his head.

“It was easy,” eyed her Killua. ”I heard the Hunter Exam was supposed to be difficult, but a lazy jog is hardly challenging.”

“Give them a benefit of the doubt, most people here weren’t trained from a young age,” reprimanded him Chuu. In the corner of her eye, Gon looked clueless, but she did not exclude him faking the innocence. Killua was a trained one for sure. His was too wary of her for anything else. Gon could’ve been just incredibly talented, prodigy, even, or a potentially powerful enhancer, just like she smiled brightly at Killua. 

He mirrored her expression. “Of course. They are just regular people, after all.”

Whatever he thought something of her previously, if he paid her any attention at all, was unimportant. After her sudden burst of speed at the end of the tunnel, knowing she was nowhere near them, she was no longer part of the background for him.

Good.

Amidst all applicants pouring out of the tunnel, two sets of footsteps approached them. She did not look at them, but Gon’s face lit up and he jumped to his feet, greeting them.

“Oh no, not you again,” grumbled Leorio, seeing her in his friend’s company. She looked at them, catching Kurapika sending a stern glare at the older one.

She winked at both of the teenagers, but Leorio was no longer looking at her, hands propped on his knees, catching his breath, and Kurapika was, once again, somewhere in his thoughts.

Well, fine with her. Behind him, a familiar trio emerged and Chuu enthusiastically waved to them, beckoning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes that sentence’s cut is abrupt  
> "These stairs may be a sin of logic, but so was she" is a phrase that survived all the editing from the very first draft, even if I wrote it with a thought to definitely change it later. Now I just like it  
> Since East Gorteu is a reference to North Korea, I assume that West Gorteau may share similarities with South Korea. K-pop -> g-pop  
> You have no idea how much grief Kurapika's section has caused me. Leorio's was an instant "job well done", but not Kurapika, nooooo. I had three different ways that exchange went! No more lines for him for sure.  
> Speaking of - now you know what "canon divergence" in the tags refers to! At first I just simply refused to deal the bleeding, slowly infecting wound that canon Kurapika is, but now there are plot reasons that basically wrote themselves on their own  
> Though of keeping it a secret until the end of the exam, but decided against it. We have more important things to cover other than a better version of his reality, there is plenty of drama in other places


	3. Swindler's Swamp, part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I was done with the first major draft of this chapter (except the end segment that turned into a separate chapter), there was 5548 words. Now, after this week's edit, there is 7760 *deep sigh*  
> So this chapter, unexpectedly, is the first to break into two parts. This is not a two-parter plotwise, it’s just for the convenience of reading  
> I will post the second tomorrow or the day after

Examinees steadily funneled out, some of them so exhausted, that they kneeled to catch their breath as soon as they moved a couple meters away from the exit. She watched as HeeJin almost literally fell down on the damp grass, the backpack dropped close. Chuu felt somewhat torn - on one side, she was glad that the girl was able to run all this way. On the other - they weren’t finished running. If she was so exhausted, it was better for her to fail in a tunnel.

When she looked at Choerry, Chuu met a contemplative gaze. She held it for a couple of seconds, before moving on to check how HyunJin was, neither surprised that the girl was fine, nor unashamed of her decision in the tunnel. If someone was failing on the first phase in a clearly non-lethal environment, she wasn’t about to hold their hand through it. Even if she thought that that specific someone was nice. She wasn’t sure if Choerry was shaming her for it, but there were certainly cogs turning in her head.

HyunJin almost immediately began doing slow stretches, looking barely bothered. She was sweating, and a bit out of breath, but nothing close to exhaustion HeeJin was experiencing. Chuu was somewhat impressed - it was a great result for a first timer on the exam.

As soon as Choerry got closer, she also sat on the ground and enthusiastically engaged the boys in a conversation. Chuu was catching snippets of it as she was digging through her bag, searching for some candies. Or chocolate. Something, she always had something in her bag and Chuu was absolutely, one hundred percent sure she bought some before boarding that crashed airship!

"Wow! You two ended first? That is amazing!” gushed Choerry. “How old are you two?"

“Twelve,” laughed Gon. “I guess I have never noticed how active I am usually in the forests. It must have helped.”

"Still inhuman," murmured quietly HyunJin, shaking her head, but waved Choerry’s quirked eyebrow off. Finished with her stretches, she sat close to HeeJin, fishing out a bottle of water from the girl’s backpack. Unscrewing the cap, she turned to Killua, smiling faintly. "What about you? I am HyunJin, by the way, eighteen.”

"Same as Gon. Killua," he said nonchalantly, not really looking at any of them, expression so distant, it was clear he was annoyed by the sudden group of people dragging him into a conversation.

Finished drinking, HeeJin tiredly thanked HyunJin and laid back on the ground, closing eyes. She exhaled once, introducing herself, but stopped midway, understanding she was too quiet. “HeeJin, Eighteen,” she repeated.

Eyes turned to Kurapika.

“Sixteen, Kurapika,” he said, then pointed with his chin at Leorio, whose hands were propped on the knees, breathing deeply. “Leorio is nineteen.”

“And I’m nineteen too,” finished the introductory circle Chuu, finally finding what she looked for. The timing was good, as there were quite a few glances sent from her to Leorio. With victorious cheer, she raised a bag of chocolate candies. She passed them around, allowing herself a slight smirk, when offering them to Killua. Staring her dead in her eyes, he took several of them. Chuu fought off a grin threatening to stretch on her face, deeply amused with his reaction. She wasn’t the type to use poisons! 

Everyone but Kurapika accepted some. Wise, but also his loss.

"You do seem capable too, Killua,” said Choerry, facing him. “Still, it is weird to see someone so young take it.” 

He shrugged. “You say it like it is challenging. So far nothing I saw was all that special."

Leorio angrily protested, backed by HeeJin’s death glare from the ground.

* * *

After twenty more minutes their brief rest ended. The door closed with a clang, cutting off an exhausted man, despite his panicked begging as he crawled the last couple stair steps.

In a silence descended on the hill, the examinees stood upright, ready to tackle the next obstacle. HeeJin cringed at a few dirt stains on her jeans and sleeveless shirt, but wasn’t as miffed about it as she would be if she was fully rested. She only hoped it would be not as noticeable after it dried and fell off. She secured the tag back on her coat, putting it back on, and tugged the beanie, lowering it. With her backpack on, she stood next to Choerry, waiting for further instructions. HyunJin was a couple steps to her left, close to Chuu. 

Behind her, Leorio, her brother in sensible human capabilities and limitations, also was standing straight, no longer swaying. The break greatly benefited them both, although he decided to keep his shirt off. She hoped the glue on the tag was a serious one, to hold on even through a jog in such humid air, as it would be a miserable way to fail.

Everybody was looking at Monsieur Satotz, who was overlooking the forest, partially obscured by a light low fog. 

“Treacherous wetlands, also known as the Swindler’s Swamp. It comprises the next leg of the first phase,” he announced. “Please note that there are many crafty and voracious creatures unique to these wetlands. They’ll trick you in a blink and eat you with relish.This is not their whim, but the basis of their entire ecosystem and the reason for the swamp’s name.” He turned around to face the examinees with a serious mien. “If you get lost, you are as good as dead. So take care of following me closely.”

“Nice of him to warn us,” she overheard Leorio confidently mutter to Kurapika. “Can't dupe someone who’s on the lookout for tricks.”

“ _He’s lying!_ ”

Loud shriek cut through the air and the examinees whipped around. A beat-up man in dirty clothes turned the corner of the tunnel exit, one arm clutching his stomach.

“He’s an impostor, don’t let him deceive you! He’s not the examiner. I’m the real one!”

“Yeah, sure as we would believe...” started some applicants while others stuttered out questions and disbelief: “Impostor?! But…!”

Others had their heads whipped back at Satotz. “Then who - or what - is he?!”

The majority remained silent.

HeeJin frowned. She sent glances to her left, gauging reaction from the girls. HyunJin and Chuu were both looking at the direction of the man, the former's chin lifted a bit, a barely noticeable twitching of nostrils present for some reason, and the latter's facade completely disinterested. She threw a glance to her right, where Choerry was - HeeJin did a double-take - still looking at the forest, ignoring the commotion.

She moved closer, tugging at the girl’s sleeve, motioning at the situation at hand. Choerry looked behind her, at the roughed-up man, then huffed and turned back to the swamp, dismissively waving her hand.

“I’ll show you!” The man moved a couple steps away from the exit, giving a clear view at something he was clutching in his other hand. Distressed murmuring rose through the front. HeeJin hurriedly stood on her tiptoes to see the proof, just as the man raised it. A lean human-sized monkey, both eyes blankly staring at the sky, tongue lolling out. Its fur was covered in mud and few spots of blood, tangled in whatever struggle killed it. The man accusatory pointed at Satotz. “He’s one of the wetland creatures - the man-faced ape!”

She felt her face morph into a polite disinterest, as she dug through her thoughts (there was something wrong but she just couldn’t point a finger at it, was it about their examiner’s composure and this man’s lack of one or the endurance, but animals had great stamina, she thought)

A wave of hushed whispers washed over the crowd, half of the people outwardly reacting, while the other stood still, tensely observing the situation. A blur of white moved in a corner of her eye, but HeeJin habitually ignored it, her head clearing a bit, letting her focus better.

The man continued explaining the situation. “They lust after fresh human flesh, but are too weak to capture prey on their own. So they disguise themselves and lead a crowd of humans to the wetlands where, in cooperation with other creatures, they capture them alive!” She heard HyunJin huff. “This time they’re out to sweep up the entire hunter applicant pool!..”

Her heart froze, when with a short whistle three cards buried halfway in the man’s face. She almost jumped, startled, choking on her breath.

A more noticeable blur of white flashed close to her feet, bringing her back to the ground, jolting her out of her stupor and to the threat.

HeeJin snapped her head towards the source before the body hit the ground. Hisoka stood there, grinning to himself, shuffling cards, the rustle swallowing the hill. 

In a corner of her eyes she saw Choerry, who was suddenly facing the situation, turning around at some point, stepping closer to her. She ignored that, out of instincts that were screaming at her to not turn away from the predator in the room.

Something palpably hopped on her foot and a small memory of comfort soothed her tension.

Choerry quietly hummed and gently took her by the elbow, for some reason almost startling her with that. HeeJin tore her gaze away from Hisoka, and Choerry sent her a quick supportive smile, before pointedly looking to HeeJin’s left, where the other two girls stood. HeeJin followed her lead and saw Chuu, surprisingly tense. Not in an openly aggressive way, but having that subtle focused alertness, that happens when in a room full of people somebody, who is likely to be armed, starts reaching towards a gun. 

While her face projected a mild indifference, her eyes were burrowing in Hisoka. Chuu was leaning forward, her hands by her side, one half-step made forward, almost shielding HyunJin, her shoulder an inch in the way between the two. HyunJin herself was still standing as she was, eyes wide open, transfixed by the performance.

The sound of shuffling cards haunted the hill for a few very long, tense seconds.

Hisoka chuckled. “He-heh. I see. That is the real one,” the man threw a slow gaze at their examiner.

Another three cards were held in Satotz’s hands, the man looking both unimpressed and annoyed by the attack. The combination made the man look borderline grim for a brief second, before he flicked the cards away, closing his eyes. When he opened them, they were tranquil once again.

She heard rustling and monkey yapping. HeeJin looked there, just in time to see another card connect with what was previously presented as a dead monkey. 

“Now we all know,” singsonged Hisoka, not breaking eye contact with Satotz.

To her left she noticed the motion. Chuu forcefully blinked once, momentarily grimacing as she averted her eyes from the scene, stepping back the half-step she made previously. She snapped her eyes up, making contact with her’s, and HeeJin noticed the fleeting mix of confusion and something else, before it was replaced with a smile. She smiled back at Chuu, before turning back to the scene.

“Examiners,” drawled Hisoka, still shuffling his cards, ”are Hunters who do this, without pay, by the request of the Judging Committee. A simple Hunter, which we ourselves aspire to become, would have no trouble dodging my attack.”

“I shall take that as a compliment,” said Satotz. “But,” he sent an empathizing stare, “the next attack on me, for _any_ reason, will be grounds for immediate disqualification. Understood?”

“Sure,” placidly agreed Hisoka, smiling and putting away the deck.

In a heavy pause, HeeJin sighed - silence was suffocating, compared to the one that was before Satotz’s speech. 

Loud wing flapping turned her head back to the fake examiner. Flock of birds gathers around the dead monkey and the monkey that was deceiving them, unbothered by the proximity of the examinees. HeeJin felt a heavy pang in her heart. That monkey still looked way too human-like for her liking. 

As the birds began fiesting, Satotz made a slow walk halfway towards them. “As you see, losing isn’t pretty,” he said dispassionately, leaving the underlying implication hanging in the air.

“The law of the jungle is disgusting!” grumbled Leorio behind her and, with a jolt, HeeJin remembered of the other applicants.

“Nice ruse, saying I'm an impostor in order to confuse the examinees into taking the wrong path - right into their clutches. _That's_ the sort of life-or-death deception that makes the swamp the perilous and fascinating place it is,” overt passion surged through his voice. “I’m sure many of you were swayed, and started having doubts about me.”

Several figures shifted and a couple let out a nervous laughter.

Satotz sighed and began walking out of the crowd and down the hill. “Well, so much for that. To the second phase.”

* * *

Running through mud was far, far more challenging compared to the concrete of the tunnel, slurping sounds of kneaded marsh filling the air, rendering any outside noise inaudible. 

It didn’t take long for the flora and fauna of the swamp to start showing its predatory nature, but only caught some stragglers on the sides, prompting everyone to group closer.

Twenty or so minutes later, fog thickened again and screams filled the air.

***

She was used to nature, having spent hours upon hours each day outside the town, roaming the mountains. She had experienced it damp and was used to that - for a few months that it poured nonstop, rains made the slopes slippery and forests hard to navigate, all smells washing away quickly. Rivers rose to the brims of high banks, usually looking like dried streams that were once roaring with water. 

But it was not _this_ dump - fog was so dense, it was hard to see three meters ahead in some areas. Air was clogging her nose and moist clang uncomfortably on her skin. If she had her mother’s hair, it would’ve started curling by now, that’s how humid it was.

Air was no longer filled with human screams. In the past few minutes HyunJin only heard occasional faraway yelps, but they were nowhere close to them. When the last distant scream ended and an unusual silence descended, HyunJin had stopped in her tracks. She strained her hearing, but heard only nature. Leaves barely rustling, water dripping. A lot of feasting noises of tearing flesh and cracking bones, but none of the footfalls she wanted to hear.

They were unapologetically lost, neither guide nor the crowd to be sensed.

Footprints had been of no help either, even if they weren’t following any of them. They twisted and went in all directions, the applicants who were lagging behind lost and trying to navigate through the deadly swamp. Most of them ended up preyed on by local fauna. She didn’t know how many were lucky to avoid any of the traps.

If they at least had a trail, she could’ve tracked others, since the examinees were just here. Some of them had very strong chemical scents or were using strong cologne, like Leorio, for example. HyunJin could have tried to follow one oh the stronger-looking ones. But there was none and they weren’t following any small couple-people tracks - they were more likely to get out if they didn’t follow likely dead end paths.

She was ready to take the lead, both more used to nature and in better shape than HeeJin. If someone were to react to the danger first, it should’ve been her.

But that didn’t turn out to be the case.

"How do you know where to go?" she pondered aloud. The determined run HeeJin had was too purposeful to be from someone as lost as they were. She weaved between the trees and kept heading in an overall straight direction despite some obstacles she had to circle around. For the first ten minutes, HyunJin followed her silently, trusting that HeeJin knew what she was doing. 

When she stopped in silence, the girl had to physically drag the redhead behind her, pleading to follow her. A confident and semi-collected HeeJin was a sudden enough change from the previously almost giving up girl. Her expression was stiff, but not troubled. HyunJin decided to trust her on this one. 

"Intuition," said HeeJin with her eyes glued to the trees, before sharply changing direction again, opting to go through an area with more water and less solid ground. HyunJin followed.

* * *

"Choerry, I cannot see the girls," interrupted her rant Chuu. "I think they got lost."

Choerry’s first knee-jerk reaction was a thoughtless dismissal of her words, continuing her pursuit until Chuu gave up a hint. It was her turn to poke, as there was something tangible she could aim her interest at. After all, the display on the hill was an fascinating action, coming from a girl, who didn’t slow down even for a second when HeeJin fell behind.

Choerry was not holding that up against Chuu - some people didn’t like to help others, or those they just met! And that is okay! She met plenty of those and had such among her friends.

But she would be damned if she doesn’t get at least a hint to work with, a needle to thread for the course of the exam. However, Chuu was not cooperating, clamming up and acting as if she only dispassionately watched the confrontation. Choerry felt her curiosity swell inside her this whole time, almost unbearably interested in her new friends and a potential-friend.

But it once again clouded her focus, dammit! Choerry reprimanded herself for getting tunnel-visioned with Chuu’s oddity and leaving HeeJin and HyunJin behind. A nasty habit, her friends liked to poke at it in good humor. Sadly, she doubted she would ever stop that entirely.

She worried her lip. HeeJin and HyunJin getting lost was unfortunate. The swamp proved to be extremely dangerous for those who lagged behind, the background of sporadic screams a constant presence, even if they became sparser in the past few minutes.

"We are going back," she stated, meeting the puzzled look Chuu gave her. 

That made her pause for a split second. Was Chuu not interested in the girls’ continued survival? Choerry thought she was fond of them too. Did she read that wrong? Or was Chuu of the calculating type? It didn’t seem right, but what did she know about the redhead? Nothing. 

Going back _would_ probably seem unreasonable from the perspective of a coldly calculative person - it would benefit to ignore others on this exam by being selfish. After all, what if the order of arrival to the next site was important? It was not uncommon for the first arrivals to have a benefit, Kim Lip told her. But that was in the latter phases, not the first. Was Chuu interested in possible benefits or just uninterested in searching for the girls?

Musing over that, Choerry absentmindedly grabbed Chuu’s forearm, fingers firmly curled around her knitted glove (in the back of her mind a surprised thought flashed about a solid surface underneath it), startling the girl, and dived to the side, away from the Satotz’s guidance, forcing them to do a sharp u-turn.

* * *

Chuu liked lush old forests, sturdy layered branches spaced just enough to feel the air between them but with decades(or even centuries)-old trunks too frequent to have _too_ wide of a field of view. It was much easier to move through them, jumping from branch to branch on top speed, ignoring whether it was raining the other day or any natural debris there might have been. Only rushing at top speed through the canopy, not having to worry about any mission or people, trusting herself to be agile enough to not kill herself, squashing against one of the trees like a bug against a windshield.

In similar ways, fields and rocky mountains were enjoyable to run through, vast open spaces to flow through without a care in the world. While she was not a nature-dedicated person, Chuu liked it!

However, swamp forests were very much opposite of those, and an addition of unknown purple-haired variables wasn’t making this any better. While she was still running relatively fast, she was nowhere up to her usual speed. Worse, she could not use En, not with Choerry and moreso not with Hisoka fallen back, who, she knew, was lurking somewhere, bloodlusting.

Chuu would very much prefer to not face Hisoka right now. Not ever and not with the impulse she had earlier.

It was unfortunate HyunJin was just looking too much and her subconscious acted before she did. Chuu acknowledged that she should address this later with Yves and Go Won.

She wouldn’t.

Alas, her mistake made Choerry focused on her, pointedly nagging even while running so close to others, they risked to be tripped. She wasn’t asking any direct questions, but her reminiscence of some likely made-up events in her life had a conspicuous amount of “subconscious moves” and “jumping in front of someone”. She wasn’t overly loud but that was not the point.

When the girls appeared to be lagging behind, she said so, hoping to send Choerry off, as the girl seemed to be pretty invested in them for some reason. Not that she couldn’t care less about them, her situation was just… Different.

But, in alerting the girl, Chuu was dragged along, since, apparently, she missed the memo that she was now glued to Choerry.

After the girl just grabbed her, almost begging to be attacked, turning both of them around, she thought of just going back to follow Satotz again and pretending she never had any business in that.

However, that would burn any possible bridges for friendship between her and any of them and Yves told her to at least try. “Not alienating” was high on the list of basic rules for that.

She sighed internally.

This whole situation was exactly the reason why she thought it was better for two of them to fall behind in the tunnel if they were underqualified. At least that way they could turn back safely and she could ignore the order without feeling guilty. They were nice and sweet and a perfect match for that hypocritical advice - they were girls, her age, skilled enough to get to the starting site of the Hunter exam on their first try, but not too skilled to be suspicious or pose danger to her or her friends. 

And now they were lost in Swindler's Swamp.

_With Hisoka lurking around._

Which looped her thought process back into her mistake near the exit. At the start, before the marathon, she had to check if she was seeing things or if HyunJin just had a similar face, but it turned out to be just a morbid coincidence. It still was unsettling, looking at her. Back in the tunnel, she also had a catching up thought that the redhead and Choerry had somewhat similar faces. Luckily, it seemed the latter was too different overall to trigger any sort of reaction in her.

The girls described the exam almost as a vacation, but, so far, it was building up to be anything but. She also had a sneaking suspicion that Go Won was gleeful over the fact that Hisoka moved from taking the exam in her year to Chuu’s. Of course it became a vacation for her after he left!

She undoubtedly had that in mind when Chuu left for the exam. No wonder the girl was smirking!  
To think Chuu forgot that warning! Even if it was made a year ago, Hisoka was one of their more or less constant clients, for God’s sake, it resurfaced in their conversations!..

A distant explosion of killing intent made her tense up, instantly dropping into Zetsu. The source was now behind them, not far enough, never far enough.

Chuu prayed this wasn’t his reaction to HyunJin or HeeJin. 

Both she and Choerry sped up at the same time, focused on the search.

* * *

HyunJin made an audible sound of bewilderment. Over her shoulder, in the center of the clearing that they just made a wide arch around, she saw a mossy boulder uncoil. It shifted and, with a grumble, settled back, in a rock of a different shape.

“You are really good at survival in the wilderness,” mused HyunJin.

HeeJin laughed bitterly. “Worse than you think. Only navigating around and even that works one time out of five,” she groaned. “You have no idea what kind of places I wounded up in by accident!”

They were no longer running at the pace of the crowd, settling in a more patient tempo. It left them with plenty of breath to talk. Thankfully, the fog was also slowly thinning, letting her ponder about the possibility of them finally getting out of the swamp. It was an uplifting line of thought.

“Well, you don’t seem to be dead, so it must’ve worked out.”

“It did. Places _were_ weird, but none of them was deadly dangerous.” HeeJin took a pause, before adding in a quiter, more confused tone: “Some were borderline creepy but that might be just me.”

HyunJin chewed her cheek, thinking of that. “Creepy how?”

HeeJin kept silent for a while and when HyunJin thought of moving on, blackhaired girl said: “I do not know how to properly explain. There was a feeling like something didn’t belong to those places, like… Ah, I really don’t know how to explain. Like. You know the feeling when coincidences are too suspicious or timing that makes you paranoid? A blanket of awareness? It wasn’t anything solid, just a vague feeling...” HeeJin looked back, meeting her gaze for a second. Sighing, she turned back to the road. “I don’t know how to convey that in words. Just forget that.”

She wouldn't forget that. “Was that creepiness linked to something that happened to you?” If so, contrary to what HeeJin was thinking, HyunJin could empathize.

“No?” HeeJin was sounding confused, bending under a low-hanging branch, large leaves covered in brown dots. She kept moving through a copse, ignoring the clearer path three meters to the left. “I don’t think so?”

“You don’t sound so sure,” she pointed out, following. 

HeeJin made an unintelligible noise at that.

After it was clear she won’t elaborate, HyunJin returned to a previous question she had. “You look like a city girl. Where did you get to learn how to navigate?”

“I didn’t,” HeeJin shook her head, “it is just an intuition.”

They lapsed into silence once again.

She herself was often praised for her instincts and intuition. It failed her here, to her slight disappointment. It stung a little that she had to be guided in nature and not the other way around, but it wasn’t hitting her pride too badly. She rarely got to be in a completely new environment. Especially in so hostile. Was this even a situation she could’ve gone through just by herself? Following her own instincts?

No. There were places where intuition worked and where it didn’t. This wasn’t one she would risk it in, at least, not on her own volition. Currently, the only thing that could be named “a mistake”, was letting the crowd out of sight, but that meant leaving HeeJin behind by herself.

And that _wasn't_ a mistake.

Content, she laid that line of thought aside.

HyunJin couldn’t help but ask: “If your instinct is so unstable, how do you rely on it now?”

“I just believe in it,” dropped HeeJin dismissively.

HyunJin shrugged. This did not seem like a topic HeeJin wanted to talk about. HyunJin was content to drop the conversation and focus on the road ahead.

A couple minutes later HeeJin spoke up quietly. Not expecting continuation, HyunJin had to make an effort to discern her words.

“My experiences taught me that it is better to believe in myself and die due to my own mistakes than it is to sit in indecision and die because of someone else’s,” said HeeJin, by the tone of it, carefully mouthing each word.

The conversation died there.


	4. Swindler’s Swamp, part 2

Well _that_ was interesting. Choerry was not expecting to see such a relaxed scene. Chuu and her were both trailing the girls from behind, finding their footprints as they made a quick search over the branching paths from the main trail. Most of them were very dead ends. Their shoes sizes were not uncommon, even if the majority of applicants did lean on scale to a larger body size. 

Despite that, they wound up finding them relatively soon, already running in the territory, where trees grew branches strong enough to travel through the canopy, which they did, still in Zetsu.

What surprised her - and, she would guess, Chuu - was to see them traversing in relative safety and peace. They were jogging lightly, seemingly unperturbed neither by lack of any guiding noise nor footprints to follow.

Even stranger, it was HeeJin, who was guiding them.

They finally were nearing the blurry border of the most precarious territory, swamp slowly melting away. Fog was still present, but nothing compared to what it was before, just a low, barely seen layer of film near the ground.

Choerry cheered internally. Overall, the situation was great!

And it was going to continue being great, seeing where they were heading - she wanted to see what happened there and their direction lined up nicely.

Hopefully, neither of them was of faint heart, as it seemed they were aiming directly towards epicenter of Hisoka’s bloodlust.

* * *

Lost in her thoughts, HeeJin mused over the scare Hisoka gave at the exit - it was quite possible that he inadvertently saved her and HyunJin’s life with that stunt. She entertained herself thinking how, if he was any less insane, she might’ve thanked him later. Alas, she would just avoid him like plague - no need to signal about her mental disorder to random criminals. Or attract their attention at all.

A sudden change of scenery startled her as they burst into a big clearing. As soon as her consciousness caught up with what she was seeing, HeeJin stopped dead in her tracks, making a subconscious step back.

There were half a dozen people lying on the ground in the center of it, undoubtedly dead. Another one laid slightly further. There were a couple rabbits hopping around, sniffing curiously at the dead man. She followed them with her eyes and felt bile rise to her mouth. She swallowed it down, mindlessly raising her hand to her face.

“There was a fight,” said HyunJin.

Sarcasm, HeeJin was unable to swallow back. “Did deadmen clued you in?” She scowled both at the scene and herself. HeeJin saw dead people on a couple occasions before and she knew that the exam was lethal and she would see death, but it still did not prepare her for it. “Sorry, that wasn’t...”

“I mean besides those men. Look,” HyunJin interrupted her, unperturbed by her tone, pointing at some dirt patches, “there, there and tracks there. Someone walked in different directions and later returned… and here someone fell, but no body. Someone rolled on the ground a lot in this region. But it seems like the fighters went their own ways, there are no bodies outside those in uniform.” Tracks easily preserved echoes of the fight and as HyunJin pointed at them, instead of bodies, HeeJin was getting less nauseous. Not calm, but no longer on the verge of vomiting. 

HyunJin frowned, turning her head to the side, nostrils twitching again, barely noticeable. The girl made a step towards the circle of bodies and HeeJin was about to ask about that, when something dropped in front of her. She flinched and jumped back, further, than HeeJin did, even if she was closer to the scare. HeeJin had her sable out and in position before her mind caught up with her eyes. Choerry, with raised open palms.

“Do not startle us like that!” she hissed at the girl.

“Sorry,” apologetically waved the girl. “Did not want to startle you from behind.”

“How is it better than dropping from the sky right in front of us?” argued HyunJin, glaring.

“And how is it any better than just calling us?” HeeJin forcefully sheathed the sable. Choerry pinched her brows apologetically. “Wait, nevermind - no, do not nevermind, don’t do that again - but were you following us? Or is this,” she motioned at the clearing, feeling dread at the sudden thought, “your job?”

“Yes. No.” With an indignant yelp, HeeJin spun around facing Chuu. Can people stop sneaking up on them? She was informed on numerous occasions that that was rude and begging for a reflexive attack. “You are unbelievably lucky,” said Chuu, unnaturally serious, meeting her glare.

“Getting lost in the deadly swamp is hardly fortunate.”

“Remember Hisoka?” ignored her mumbling Chuu.

HeeJin snorted, crossing arms. “My head is not a sieve! How could anyone forget him?”

Chuu’s eyebrows made a barely-noticeable twitch. “When we were heading back, he was here,” she turned to HyunJin. “You have sharp eyes. The fact that he left someone alive is troubling, but none of our concern. He was aching for a kill since before the exam started and finally got his fill. I do not know how to properly empathise exactly how _unbelievably_ lucky you two are,” she fixed both of them with a heavy gaze. “Do not, under any circumstances, cross paths with him.”

Nodding, HeeJin averted her eyes, looking back to the scene, where there was only one rabbit hopping around now. Chuu was right. She had no idea what would’ve happened if she met him in his worst. Die, probably. 

Humming in contemplation, HyunJin approached the circle, stopping halfway to look around, slowly inhaling, before moving right near the bodies. She crouched, inspecting them closer, and HeeJin marveled at the other one’s composure and (or) lack of revulsion and fear towards death. HyunJin tilted her head and, for a moment, sat in silence. “No. I disagree. It concerns me a lot - we cannot guarantee that we will never stand next to him in the wrong moment.” Another moment passed. “Chuu, why didn’t he kill them?”

“I don’t know”, said Chuu, coming closer and taking HeeJin by the hand. To her surprise and relief, the girl led her in a slight arch to the other edge of the clearing, pulling past the bodies. Despite her dread, HeeJin did look at them. The only thing she saw were deep cuts, one for each. She looked at Choerry hovering over a single body laying slightly to the side, a track of blood on its nape. Seemed like the man was crawling away from the fight when Hisoka murdered him. She looked away.

It was a rather clean kill. HeeJin didn’t know what counted as such among criminals, but there didn’t seem to be much struggle, hence it was clean in her books. It brought her fleeting relief, not having to wake up from images of torn-up bodies for the rest of the exam, but also stressed her - those fighters were nowhere near Hisoka’s skill level. They hadn’t a chance against him. 

And so did she.

Forget plague, she was avoiding him like a bomb laying next to open fire.

She allowed Chuu to pull her past all of the signs of struggle before digging her heels, wordlessly pointing back at HyunJin and Choerry, who were quietly talking about something. The redhead rolled her eyes, but let go of her hand, slightly annoyed, but agreeing to wait. Chuu turned to the clearing, huffing and crossing her arms.

HeeJin hesitated for a moment. She leaned closer and hugged her for a moment. “Thank you,” she whispered. Then, realizing something, added: “For returning for us too.”

After two beats, HeeJin felt a hand on her back, giving her a couple pats. She let herself cling to Chuu for comfort for a couple more seconds before letting go, looking to the ground, a faint smile tugging her lips.

She would thank Choerry later too. The knowledge that they actively went back for them warmed her soul and soothed her stress.

When HyunJin approached them, bunnyless clearing behind her, Chuu spun on her heels and led their group into the forest without another word.

Choerry caught up with them. “Then maybe he saved them for later?” she cheerfully continued the topic they had previously. “When he feels bloodlust again? Or for a favor at a later date? Or will he wait for them to be more worthwhile?” Contents of her words did not match with her words, morbid scenarios switching each other.

Chuu cheerfully smiled at Choerry (so blatantly misplaced, she thought). “Who knows.”

* * *

At some point they found a dirt road leading to the site of the second phase and left the last signs of the swamp behind. Fog disappeared completely, vanishing even before the ground became fully solid again, no longer slurping with each step. HyunJin heard HeeJin muttering quiet praise under her breath when they first saw the path, two wide tracks leading somewhere. She wasn’t going to lie - stepping not only on solid, but hard-pressed ground again was a great feeling.

Other examinees were gathered in front of the tall closed gates, catching their breaths, Satotz nowhere to be seen. Fence itself was beige and tall, almost six meters high, the gateway framed by two small towers. For now, the only concerning thing was a loud rumbling that was sometimes heard over it, any signs of other danger absent. 

As the girls arrived at the site, taking in the place, there was a stark difference that they noted - the crowd got smaller, only a hundred and a half applicants or so left out of the initial four hundred.

Before they came closer to the resting examinees, Chuu motioned them to move ahead, as she led Choerry back down the road. HyunJin readily let them do their thing and started searching for the applicants with any signs of battle. Quite a lot of examinees had dirt on them, but all of it was all splattered on their lower halves, from mud everyone threw around with their shoes. Not the ones she was looking for. She was also trying to find the source of one particular scent she noticed on the clearing.

“I hope no more running,” said HeeJin quietly behind her. HyunJin glanced back and smiled at her distrustful staring at the gates, “or I am throwing hands.”

“There won’t be a unified writing test, if you are hoping for that one. Better rest while there is a chance and prepare,” _your fists,_ she finished internally. HyunJin shared the thought. She was tired, too, even if not as exhausted as HeeJin was - the girl joked on the last wisps of her second wind. She had to pull HeeJin by hand to make her walk anywhere ever since they finished the first phase. As soon as she found her target, she would let her rest, but, for now, they were sticking together.

Quick glances around proved that quite a lot of people were tired, not as shy about sitting or even lying down as after the tunnel. An hour-long run through the swamp exhausted them enough to encourage them to catch every bit of respite they could.

Unsurprisingly, HyunJin was the first to see the boys, immediately heading towards them, tugging HeeJin along. Leorio, still shirtless and now covered in dirt from head to toe, was propped against a tree. He was sporting a fascinating bruise on his swollen face that he kept confusedly poking. In a moment she noticed dirt on Gon’s clothes.

They were the ones to get out of the fight with Hisoka. That was bad. She expected that but still hoped someone else had caught his attention. It didn’t come as a surprise, as she thought she sensed Leorio's cologne there, but wasn't hundred percent sure. And there were plenty of really small footprints all over clearing, almost child-sized, later leading away from it.

They fought Hisoka and survived. With any luck, they will tell her, how.

The boys turned as they approached, Kurapika having a hint of a smile, opening his mouth for a greeting.

“How did he not kill you?” Her question caused Kurapika to shut his mouth with a clank, smile disappearing and brows furrowing. On the other hand, he might have not been in a fight. He had no signs of a struggle on his light clothes and neither had Killua, his clothes thoroughly wet. Likely from one of the temporary showers installed by the wall, as even now she could sense a clinging stench of vomit.

“Nice to see you all get here safe and sound, boys, really glad,” interrupted HeeJin before anyone could say anything else. “Why, thank you, we are also thrilled to get here unharmed, ah, your concern warms my heart,” she continued with pleasantries in the same monotonous tone, not giving anyone time to respond, shaking off HyunJin’s hand. “So wonderful indeed. Don’t mind me.”

HeeJin moved a couple more steps under the shadow and gracefully fell on the ground, dead to the outside world.

Gon turned to HyunJin and exclaimed, happily: “You found a way! Kurapika said you two fell really far behind!”

“We did,” answered HyunJin. She glanced at HeeJin’s form. “We were lucky to avoid all hostile flora and fauna on our way here.”

“Including Hisoka,” Kurapika crossed his arms. “How did you know about that?”

“Chuu and Choerry said it was him,” easily confessed HyunJin. “Said he was bloodthirsty enough to do that and killing those men might have been a way for him to calm down,” a look of slight irritation crossed over Killua’s features.

“Well they are mistaken then, that certainly did not calm him down enough,” said Kurapika, then glanced at confused-looking Leorio and unfolded arms, sighing. “We still had to run, but he did not chase us… At least there was no need to.”

Gon motioned for HyunJin to lean closer, Killua also turning his ear to them. “Leorio does not remember what happened and we do not want to tell him.” HyunJin smiled slightly and nodded. Understandable, Leorio seemed like a person whose ego could be bruised. “We think he liked fighting us,” he said in a normal volume.

That also lined up with what Choerry said.

Killua, to whom this information seemed to be new, whistled. “You have seriously lucked out.”

HyunJin zoned the conversion out, sitting in the sun spot near HeeJin. It seemed there was no secret plan to live through a fight with Hisoka. Like Chuu advised, it was either “stray away” or “fight for your life”.

She hummed to herself, leaning back, bathing in sunshine. In the background, she listened to the boys discussing what weird animals they have seen in the swamp. She closed her eyes.

This exam was much more than she expected.

* * *

Inhale, exhale. She collected her thoughts. “Whoever taught you nen never mentioned not to grab others without warning,” stated Chuu as an opening and instantly caught how unintentionally aggressive that sounded. She explained: “What if I was into cutting arms off? What if I thought _you_ were?”

They walked half a minute down the road and hid in the forest, far from prying eyes and ears. This was not exactly the talk she thought she would ever give, but if Choerry was not well-versed in use of nen and different hatsu possibilities yet, she had to clear some things for her, as a nonhostile nen-using senior.

Choerry shrugged, blinking. “Sorry, I thought I was slow enough to warn you.” 

Chuu squinted. Was Choerry not understanding or was that passive aggression? Or was Chuu looking too much into this? Should she tell her that if Choerry _wasn’t_ that slow, _Chuu_ would’ve cut her arms off, thinking of that as of a possible attack and retaliating?

“You are a nen-user, no matter how slowly you were moving. Besides, I have gloves!” She lifted her hands to bring her fingerless knitted gloves closer to Choerry’s face. “You could’ve easily tugged me by those! Do you know how many hatsus are activated by touch?”

Was Choerry not advanced enough yet to know of conditions and limitations? Activation or tagging on touch was a relatively common one.

At least, her angry hissing made Choerry wince, finally clicking something. “Yeah, sorry. Wasn’t thinking about that.”.

Chuu watched the girl avert her eyes and throw both ponytails over her shoulders with a flick of her head. At this point of this gloriously messed-up day, she was certain Choerry was full of shit. Her last remarks at the Hisoka’s murder clearing? Chuu was unable to discern whether that was a lucky guess, experience with such people or a complete certainty and the girl was just lying. And God knew - hell, _they_ knew - that no matter how unlikable he was, he knew people and people knew him… At least, for a while. She was familiar with his preying habits enough to tag those who got away from that clearing as his new fruits. Chuu could only wish best of luck for those examinees. She had nothing to offer them.

But her current biggest problem remained with Choerry. Chuu was confident in her lie detection skills and the uncertainty the girl brought to this whole mess of an exam was a major nuisance. Not a threat, at least, not yet. But it was difficult not to grow uneasy, when a competent person like Choerry let out little to none information or reactions to work off of. Some crumbs, that weren’t even puzzle pieces. It was expected, hence, “competent”, but Chuu was the infiltrator, goddammit! It was her direct job! It was clear the girl had some sort of training in that field.

Not to mention, Choerry’s age had the opposite effect on her than HeeJin and HyunJin’s. Not as worrisome as Killua with his well-trained soundless steps, but unnerving nonetheless.

 _”Vacation”_.

And it was still the first day, barely the end of the first phase.

She made direct eye contact with the girl. “Do you know Hisoka?”

Choerry unflinchingly met her eyes. “No. I have never met him before the exam nor have I heard of him before.”

No matter how she searched, Chuu could not detect any lie in that. Voice, body language, nothing. This whole exam was spiraling out of control. This was not supposed to be this personally dangerous, full of uncertainty or confusion.

She wished Yves was here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp, it was fun knowing you, boys, see you again in *looks at her watch* six chapters  
> Who already has guesses about the girl's lives and reasoning, raise your hands *hxh joke*  
> I will be writing "nen" with lower case and nen techniques with upper case  
> Fun fact: next chapter was originally (in the very first draft) the one-page end of this one. But during the first edit it just grew and grew and grew, until the third chapter became over 9k words  
> All I'm saying: Choerry, I'm begging, don't do this again, please, one time was enough


	5. Your time to shine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is written from a single perspective. Choerry stans, you feast today! *goes into her corner and starts gently rocking back and forward* It was just a little over one page in the draft, how did this happen?..  
> Anyway, I, probably, should've mentioned earlier, but a lot of unchanged speeches - like examiners introductions and rules explanation - I take directly from manga  
> Another thing: isn't it fascinating how passionately some people take their profession?

At one in the afternoon, the gates opened, dragging heavily on the ground, revealing a large courtyard filled with several rows of cooking stations. Behind them, a large, creme-colored several floor tall building stood, with stairs leading up to it. Seemed like a residential one.

On the wide stretch between the last step and the entrance, two people overlooked the yard - a young woman with bright teal hair, gathered in five tight buns, lounged crosslegged on a short sofa and a huge man behind her, over three meters in height and almost two in width, settled on the ground. The woman was wearing a partially fishnet top with some _really_ short shorts, a sharp heel of bows-decorated knee-high shoes bouncing in the air. The man was barefoot - was there even footwear made for his size? - in a yellow shirt and black jeans, dark eyes looking under a wide forehead with droopy eyebrows, a black mop of short hair difficult to see from their perspective. 

Participants filtered in, throwing confused glances at cooking stations and waited for the examiners to speak. As the last of them walked in, a loud rumble they heard over the gate rolled again, the source ahead of them.

The woman tilted her head back with a smirk: “You're hungry, Buhara?”

“Starving,” tragically rolled eyes Buhara with a little smirk appearing on his face.

“Listen up!” the woman addressed the examinees, her loud voice easily reaching all the way up to the gates. “My name is Menchi.”

“And I am Buhara!”

Once again, not the Hunters she knew of.

“We are examiners for the second stage. And your challenge is…” Menchi made a dramatic pause, smugly looking over the expectant faces, “cooking!”

Dead silence hung in the air as everyone thought they misheard. Maybe - imagined Choerry thoughts flashing in their heads, a chorus of high-pitched confused voices - it was a mistake on Menchi’s part and she misspoke. The examinees looked at the cooking stations, quite a lot having their upper lips curling. She, personally, was _ecstatic_.

“Hell yeah,” she mouthed. Choerry, having an expectation of the possible challenge as soon as she saw their future equipment, patted herself on the shoulder. This phase can be counted as cleared. She was a good cook, great, even, if she said so herself! Sure as hell not at a level of high-class cuisine, but, among contestants around her, Choerry was optimistic in her abilities to be better than the vast majority. 

“Cooking,” blandly repeated contestant 159, square man with an axe tied to his back.

“Yes. You see, we are Gourmet Hunters,” Menchi said proudly and in the silence, following her statement, a couple of snickers were heard. Then a couple more, and Choerry could see even more shoulders shaking silently. A frown started to visibly appear on Menchi’s face.

Choerry blinked, confused. Then alarmed. Then concerned. She schooled her features back into neutrality and crossed her arms to avoid facepalming. 

This was taking an unexpected turn for the worse. 

“Sure, sure,” dismissively waved 255, the judoist, after his chuckling died down. “Just say what you want us to cook and we will be on our way.”

Visibly holding back her annoyance, Menchi let Buhara explain their task. It sounded simple enough on the first glance. Pork. They had to cook any pork well enough for both Menchi and Buhara to accept it. That was it. Simple and clean.

It wasn’t like the contestants indirectly carelessly insulted examiners' hunt or anything. Choerry drummed her fingers and uncrossed arms, getting nails away from her skin.

“This is easier than I thought,” hummed HyunJin next to her, eyeing the mangal next to them with its meter and a half spit. It had coal on its bottom, but seemed like fire could be started and regulated with handles on the side, like a good old gas stove. Counter next to it had a couple knives and a bowl of vegetables. “Maybe this one will not be as bad as the first phase.”

Choerry half-hugged her by the waist, having to lean only a little bit, as they were the same height, putting chin on HyunJin’s shoulder. She softly teased HyunJin: “Ooooh, you sound confident, good at cooking?”

“Yes. Shouldn’t be a problem, I cook often enough back home.”

Choerry made a noncommittal sound of agreement and looked at the other two, chin still on the girl’s shoulder.

HeeJin and Chuu’s expressions could only be described as “sour”, which, _interesting_. This situation shouldn’t be read as concerning to them as to cause visible distress, not with their scope of knowledge of Hunter-related topics. Maybe they were vegetarian? 

She didn’t want to think about the first answer that occurred to anyone in this situation. It promised a fiasco in progress, which was fun only when watching from the sidelines, not when your friends were in the center of it.

HeeJin caught her gaze and helplessly grimaced. “It's fine,” she mouthed. Choerry smiled at her and stood straight, letting go of HyunJin’s waist, lazily turning back to their examiners. Cooking stations stood two meters apart, so no chance of subtly cooking in their stead... She meant helping. No way of subtly helping.

Was it too insensitive of her to already kinda miss the first stage?

“The phase will end when we are full,” Menchi finished the explanation, uncrossing and switching her legs. “Start!”

Everyone turned around and promptly dispersed in the forest, none hearing the following exchange between examiners.

* * *

It went even worse than she imagined was possible.

Choerry considered it as a real achievement, right there, since she always thought of the worst case scenario _and_ was one of the best qualified to pass this stage. And yet, the examiners' emotions and skewed expectations were an obstacle she couldn’t possibly move. So she moved past voicing her disappointment right to the next thing on the “reasonabilities list” - restraining herself from attacking and killing Menchi.

Bloodlust she felt from somewhere to her right did nothing to help with that.

So, from the beginning. An hour ago, when she was searching in the forest, it turned out that there was only one breed of pigs in the Visca Forest Preserve, the Great Stamp - a giant horned boar twice as tall as a human, with huge snouts that allowed them to plow through anyone foolishly standing in front of them. 

She kicked one quietly from above, breaking its spine, and was the first to come back, taking care to avoid any other examinees. Choerry also thought of getting some local edible plants or spices, but there were none on her way back that were ripe or were ones she was familiar with using, so she had to settle with the provided ones. Which is disappointing, as even a strike of inspiration to use nuts turned out to be futile - the only nut grooves she found were of measelnut, the bluewing sort, not the early one.

She wasn’t joining HyunJin and HeeJin for this phase. This was a task she was sure girls were up to, so she did not feel the obligation of monitoring their progress. Besides, Chuu went with them, for some reason now chaperoning them. Was that because of Hisoka? She never met him, that was true, but met plenty of somewhat similar folks. Choerry understood the worry Chuu felt, but, well. Both of them are more likely to be targeted just by virtue of knowing nen. 

She was butchering the carcass under unsubtle non-observation from examiners, when she heard a distant stomping growing closer and closer. Some moments later, a crowd of participants burst into the yard. An impressed whistle slipped from her lips - almost everyone got a stamp! Wait, oh no, almost everyone got a stamp. It was concerning in a sense of competition, somewhere in the back of her mind, but, also… Was that… intended? She threw a glance at Menchi and Buhara. Judging by their expressions, no. They would probably be the ones curating the repopulation efforts as Gourmet Hunters were usually careful about that kind of stuff.

JinSoul once worked with one of those, asked to aid in gathering some of the trickier creatures from Ribbos Sea, including endangered species. The Hunter she worked with donated a hefty sum for the preservation and repopulation organisations that worked with those. Gourmet Hunters used the limited or restricted ingredients, sure, but Choerry knew the majority of them were on good terms with Poacher and Beast Hunters. Were these two an exception? 

Regretfully, back then she was busy with Kim Lip, and missed the opportunity to meet them in person. Oh well.

Choerry washed her arms and walked to her station with several bowls of meat, away from the designated zone by the wall she was butchering in. She felt some people look at her and a smile bloomed on her face as she addressed them with a raised eyebrow, but all of them looked away with confused expressions. Despite getting attention, Choerry got to her station uninterrupted and cheered, seeing her friends already busying around their stations, all of them keeping close. 

Were Great Stamps around here considered a danger to whatever purpose this structure was built? It was, after all, clearly a decision to build it here and in this style, like some rich person’s mansion. Actually, she could imagine the Association getting a job to somewhat reduce the population of such dangerous animals. She might ask Menchi or Buhara about that later, after the phase. 

Or not, depending on whether she would still remember that question by the time they complete it.

All around her, sounds of roasting were filling the air; fire crackling and meat juice simmering where it touched the heat, rare grunting of the skew supports, unused for such weight crammed on them. She had to quicken up. While Buhara looked like a man who could empty a restaurant's storage all by himself, she did not know how much Menchi could eat. She would bet it was far less. Even if by chance she turned out to be an enhancer. 

Well, no. If she was an enhancer and took small bites, she could easily go through all of them. But that was unlikely. She separated one of her ponytails in two and tugged on them, securing the hairband higher. From behind her raised arm she threw a quick appraising glance at Menchi. Who knows, who knows. Enhancers were typically interested in something more straightforward than search for ingredients and experimentation with them, but there were always exceptions. The best medic Hunter Association had was an enhancer, after all.

After flicking fire on, she prepared loin for grilling, cutting into its skin and muscle the tiniest bit, before massaging oil, some spices and a drop of vinegar into it. After a bit of consideration, she put honey back on the shelf inside the counter.

Truth be told, she never cooked anything like this and has no idea how it would taste in the end. Only hopes and theoretical estimations. Mostly she was going off of what she ate in high-end restaurants. Albeit, she usually had sauces based on fruits or berries, and even at home or at JinSoul’s she cooked with them. Grilled seasoned loin with grilled vegetables that, on a second thought, begged for a sauce… Choerry sighed and took out honey again. Garlic honey sauce it was. 

Reducing the fire level, not deeming the heat enough to rely only on coal lining the bottom of large low-sitting mangal, Choerry put chopped vegetables and the meat on the grill with smaller gaps than a default one that she found in the station. 

After she prepared everything for the sauce that she would do in the very end, she stood over the mangal, content with her vision for her dish. In the pause she had, twirling prongs, Choerry looked around to gauge the speed of cooking other participants had and gasped, inhale turning into a choked snicker.

Every single person in front of her just roasted their pigs whole! The overwhelming majority hadn’t even scrubbed carcasses before putting them over the fire! It was beyond bland and stupid and- 

The girls! Choerry’s head whipped around lightning fast.

For a blessed long second, she felt relief, before seeing the situation better. Her face froze in a lopsided smile, her habitual reaction to the horror, reserved for rare occasions she actually saw one.

HyunJin was clearly the best cook out of those three, because despite her going for the tactic of roasting the pig whole, the girl scrubbed it clean and Choerry could catch a nice smell of seasoning coming from her station, which was the reason she felt so sure everything was fine earlier. The pig was rotated evenly and the fire level was precise from what she could gauge. The skin was starting to softly color.

Overall, leagues above other applicants, awesome job.

The other two girls fared worse.

HeeJin worked with a carved and later cut piece of meat - as did Chuu, for that matter - but the chunks were uneven and taken off of its leg, judging by the carcass lying near her, the girl not having enough strength or time left to get it to the wall. The grill she cooked on was covered in burnt fat, but the meat itself was still barely grey, the heat too low. Was there salt or any spices? Choerry watched HeeJin poke the meat with a spatula as if she was afraid of it.

Situation directly on Chuu’s mangal looked relatively fine if only _slightly_ worrying. Ribs were a bit burnt, but some people liked meat that way, consoled herself Choerry.

She also had a handful of red berries on her counter. Since there were no berries provided to her, Chuu must have gathered them herself. The only plant bearing red berries of this size and shape at this time of a year in a forest like this one, were the banishberries. 

And, unlike their lookalikes moltenred berries, they were decidedly not edible. Sweet, yes, but _very_ opposite of edible. Breathtakingly, even, one might say.

Chuu was nervously humming some happy tune, face scrunched in deep concentration, the entirety of her focused on the slightly burnt ribs.

Oh, _no_.

A drop of fat fell on the coal in her mangal and Choerry turned to her station.

This was, without a doubt, a disaster.

She turned over grilling meat and vegetables before moving. Choerry should handle the girls in a way that couldn't be used as a mark against their cooking being not solely their job. They were clearly observed and she didn’t know how wide the allowed leeway was.

She marched to Chuu first, clasping hands behind her back. 

“Those aren’t moltenred berries.” Chuu was startled out of her focus, eyes immediately snapping up to her. “These are banishberries and they are highly poisonous. Thoroughly wash hands after throwing them away or do not touch them again. Have you touched them before handling the meat?”

Choerry must’ve scored trust points somewhere in the last hour, as the girl compiled without another word. She threw away berries and the meat, scrubbing her fingers clean before restarting her dish anew, borrowing new grill and tongs from HyunJin. Choerry paused for a second, eyeing gloves Chuu still had on, and moved to the neighboring station, where HeeJin stood, looking at her, distracted by their exchange. 

She crouched near HeeJin, poking her to step to the side slightly. Out of the depths of the counter, she fished out tongs. Choerry put them back on the shelf after making sure the girl saw her do so and stepped back, putting distance between her and HeeJin's station.

“Oh, I couldn’t find them! Thank you!” blinked HeeJin in confusion, leaving spatula in the cabinet and getting a more suitable tool.

Choerry nodded, leaning closer, hands clasped behind her again. “Rise heat a bit,” she whispered in HeeJin’s ear, “and put some more seasoning, too.”

“You sure? I don’t want it to suddenly burn,“ hesitated HeeJin, her hand already taking salt and pepper from the shelf. Only salt and pepper.

“It won't. The longer you let it cook at low temperatures, the more rubbery it gets.”

HeeJin turned the heat up a notch and flipped the meat over with pincers. Choerry nodded, about to return to her station, leaving advice for about more different spices behind her teeth, but the girl had another question. “How much salt and pepper?” 

“Eh, by eye? And pepper until you can smell it faintly?” How did one measure salt and pepper at the beginning? No, stop, scratch that, how could someone get to teenagehood without knowing that? 

She pondered over HeeJin’s basic cooking skill level, when she cast a glance at her own station.

The question about the girl’s upbringing was immediately dropped as she rushed to her dish. Ruined dish. 

While she was away, helping the girls, somebody threw dirt at it. 

It flew at an angle, over not only meat, but the vegetables too, sticking to the grill. Not much, two or three handfuls, but it was more than enough to completely ruin her dish. The person kept their distance, throwing it. 

But not distant enough to stay incognito. It could’ve been someone else, stepping close to his station to frame the man, but a tall short-haired redhead with a sickle at his waist forcibly relaxed his stance, moving weight to his left leg as soon as she approached her station. He didn’t sneak a glance at her or even acknowledged her return to her task as she entered his field of vision. Choerry memorized him, squinting.

He rotated his pork over the flame and had glanced at her from a corner of her eye, not turning to her a single degree. Their eyes met and she saw his startle pressed down as to not noticeably twitch. She smiled at him, taking her tongs and angling the grill, letting all of the food tumble on the ground. 

In the silence and attention descended around her, she pulled the grill completely off, and lifted it, still scorchingly hot, hanging on tightly clasped tools. Breaking eye contact, she turned around and walked away with it, the few examinees on her way hurriedly moving away.

Choerry threw the grill next to one of the unused stations, hanging new, unbent tongs on her loose jeans straps and subtly putting a salt shaker in her backpack. She took a clean grill in one hand and a bowl of vegetables in the other.

Humming, she jovially put all of that sans salt shaker near Chuu. There were two plans in her head, one declaring that she was in cooking speedrunning mode now, and the other for her revenge that will have to wait.

She refused to take the pigs HeeJin and Chuu offered, instead taking a washed bowl and a knife with her into the forest. Choerry returned with a new piece of loin less than half a minute afterwards. 

Making eye contact with the man, beaming at him without care for the world, she put new meat in the sink, while it was still actively bleeding.

He caused her to lose time. A lot of it, as many participants were halfway done. Sure. Deal. She will take it back, later. Right now she had to grill the meat anew. Choerry made the same preparations as before, squeezing the surplus of blood in the meat. 

“Stupid examinees with their stupid tactics and stupider expectations, trying to bite wrong person, well nice try, _buddy_ , I will show you how it's properly done,” she grumbled under her breath, before feeling attention in her somewhat annoyed atate. Raising her eyes, she met Chuu’s questioning gaze. The redhead sent a quick glance at the man’s back, before looking back at her, raising an eyebrow, her waving her prongs in a stabby manner. Choerry shook her head at the proposition, her mind already made up.

As she returned to her dish, she felt somewhat more relaxed. It was nice to know someone was angry on her behalf.

Her focused vigilance over her meat almost caused her to miss the first participant to try their luck, bringing a full pig on a gigantic plate. It was, again, the same judoist who was dismissive of the examiners' profession earlier. Buhara approved the dish, Menchi, without lifting for fork, did not. At the examinee's arguments she told him sharply of all the ways his pork was overcooked at some parts and undercooked at others without even tasting it.

As she was now practically glued to her station, Choerry observed the state of participant’s dishes more carefully, coming to two conclusions. First, while a lot of people immediately around her roasted pigs whole, there still was a decent amount of people who made attempts at a proper dish here and there. Second, by the looks of it, some were also sabotaged, like her.

Third, she rethought her declaration of roasting pigs whole as a morose decision. If you made it properly, there was no downside to it and only benefits.

She made the third conclusion when, upon Menchi’s finished evaluation, Buhara ate the _whole_ pig in a record time.

You could topple the eating capacity of either of them. It might take time with Buhara, but it would happen sooner or later. Roasting them unbutchered was a valid strategy.

Next participant came up the stairs, carrying a dish with another whole pig.

It continued for some time, examinees standing in a queue to have their dish evaluated. As reliably as a clock, everyone was approved by Buhara and shot down by Menchi, with the man afterwards eating every single dish, no matter how well-cooked it was. 

After some time, Choerry changed her opinion again, as Buhara appeared to be truly bottomless, chewing on the thirty-eight’s one. Those pigs were longer then she was tall, this was illogical on every level. If he wasn’t one to be targeted to be filled, it might’ve been seen as a good thing that Menchi hadn’t taken a single bite.

It might have been, if she wasn’t getting more and more irritated with each failure, that is. 

Even HyunJin, with deliciously smelling, evenly roasted meat to a nice golden shade, failed all the same, Menchi taking a second bite after Kurapika’s attempt - who she wasn’t seeing at all during this phase as their groups were on direct opposite ends of the courtyard - and telling it wasn’t tender enough. Choerry was one hundred percent sure that HyunJin’s dish was delicious, the woman seemed impossible to please. 

At least Buhara gave her cooking a small compliment. Not that it helped, really.

Menchi tasted the dishes only sometimes, almost exclusively the smaller sized dishes, where meat was prepared in chunks or, rarely, modified full carcasses.

Some butchered their pigs at the beginning of cooking, others, seeing the reception unoriginal dishes got, tried to make something out of the pork at a later stage, chopping some vegetables or cutting both into some form of stew. 

She still failed them, obviously. The woman was slowly riled up by each dish she failed, mood worsening since the tasting began. 

Choerry’s mood was soured too. She was beginning to have doubts that her pork would pass her critique, as this was looking less and less of objective evaluation and more of a fit thrown by an offended pride. _There_ it was, what she was worried about. The standard Menchi had was rising with each person, being somewhere above the clouds by now.

Choerry was preparing the sauce, as her pork was eight or so minutes before being done, but she was already starting to feel a slowly rising wave of her own annoyance, forestating the result.

The atmosphere was growing tenser by the minute, many people simply standing at their empty or just turned off stations, staring at their examiners. 

Until Menchi snapped.

“I’m full,” Buhara patted his stomach, a blessed smile on his face. The pile of bones behind him would’ve looked impressive, if her attention wasn’t focused on Menchi.

“You know what? So am I.” The woman threw an irritated look over the courtyard. Choerry tensed. “Enough of this. We finish this phase here. Failed, one hundred and forty-eight, passed, none.”

* * *

Which was the current situation she was stuck in.

Was she angry? Oh, yes. She was _pissed_. 

Choerry could not believe she would fail because of- because of _this_! Because someone insulted Hunter’s specialisation! Because people had no imagination! “Oh, no, sorry, guys, I failed because other contestants couldn’t bother to hit two fingers on the pork! Haha, oopsy!” She would be laughed out of the room! All of them passed on their first try, and here she was, trained and prepared and eager only to be blocked by other’s sheer stupidity?!

She needed a plan. Less anger, more analysis. No irrational actions, focus on clear, methodical plans, no blindness in this home.

Maybe she should kill everyone who just roasted a pig whole, to prevent them from entering and ruining the next year too? God, to think she would need to retake the exam!..

A loud crash rang across the courtyard. Examinee 255, the goddamn judoist who was disrespectful from the moment the examiners specialisation was mentioned, broke his station in a single punch.

“I’ve had enough of this. You don’t like our dishes? Too bad!” he roared, glaring at the examiners. “I’m not here to butcher pigs and cook high cuisine! I’m here to become a _Hunter_! A _Blacklist_ Hunter at that! I want a real test! Not this prissy Gourmet Hunter crapola!”

Sorry to hear, _buddy_. You have zero analysis skill needed for the job.

“Sorry to hear that,” echoed her thoughts nonchalant - severely unimpressed - Menchi, staring him dead in the eyes.

Her words caught him off-guard, even making him stand a bit straighter. “Yyeah?!” 

“Yeah, ‘cause this year Gourmet Hunter crapola rules,” Menchi blinked, uncaring of the rage now rapidly filling the examinee. ”Hey, better luck next year, huh?”

“Don’t you,” red in the face, he let out a yell, charging at Menchi, fist rising, “mess with me!”

His enraged attack was cut short with a loud slap, followed by a second and a third, from his body falling by the entrance to the courtyard, after hitting the top of one of the gate supports.

Blessed and heavy silence filled the air.

Buhara lowered his hand after sending the judoist’s body sailing through the air across the site.

“Buhara,” said Menchi, “that was uncalled for.”

“Not really,” he slanted his eyes at her. “If I hadn’t stepped in, you would've killed him.”

“Hmph! Perhaps.” Menchi stood up, with half a dozen knives in her hands. “ _He_ wants to be a blacklist Hunter? Hah! Remind him he was _popped_ by a prissy _Gourmet_ Hunter!” In a swift motion, she threw long knives in the air, low, barely above her head, catching and throwing them again, blades spinning faster than most eyes could track. “Doesn’t matter _what_ kind of Hunter you aim to be, you’ve gotta be proficient in the martial arts! Rare foods are often obtainable in remote, _inhospitable_ places and we are frequently called on to run down and capture poachers! If you’re _any_ kind of Hunter, martial arts become your _second_ _nature_! As does the burning desire to challenge the _unknown_!” All her knives landed in one hand, aimed at them as a collective. “That’s what I seek in each of you!”

Applicants all around gritted their teeth.

The way Menchi said it… it was good for those who never understood this. It filtered the essential part of being a Hunter. It’s all about the Hunt. Truly, Choerry felt the same way and empathised with the passion. She shared the idea, as she, too, sometimes broke in restricted or preserved areas in her Hunt, moved by her hungry curiosity.

Choerry did _not_ share the lack of objectivity, nor did appreciate it.

This wasn’t a test of “challenge of the unknown”. It was a crippled evaluation, completely broken by the examiner's lack of professionalism.

It put a roadblock between _her_ and _her Hunt_.

Which formed only one line of action.

Menchi had to _move_.

Her weight began rolling to the tiptoes, knees starting to bend. With stare fixed on Menchi, Choerry collected her oozing aura and- 

“Even so-" 

-a voice cut in, stopping her before she made a single step towards the woman.

"-isn’t failing an entire applicant pool a bit abrupt?” 

Above them, an aircraft with the Hunter Association logo was sailing - the Judging Committee, flashed in the back of her head - and, from thirty meters up in the sky, a figure jumped down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (I wanted to have phrase "poisoned fruit" in Choerry's grumbling so badly, but it just didn't sound TT )  
> Sooooo I just remembered about the fact that I had a song I wanted to call a theme for the beginning of this fic. Like, it suits for both readers and the characters. Not the translation, just... the general feel of it  
> And I forgot to tell about that  
> Whoops?  
> Anyway, it's DAY6 - WARNING  
> And I also have made a playlist for wabrw (no personal songs are in here, no direct spoilers, no songs about specific interpersonal relationships), [you can listen to it here!](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1VcOIve2vFRVlK2aVKeHFv)  
> Also: the second phase in manga is rather different from anime version! It went in two stages - you had to please Buhara first (70 pigs! Holy shit!) and then Menchi, who demanded sushi, except! Nobody but Hanzo even knew what sushi was! There was no wind in the ravine either, they had to climb like normal people  
> (Next chapter is over 8k words so it will be broken in two parts, posted within 24 hours of each other)


	6. Puzzle pieces, part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Previous version of the title was "Finally, some good goddamn food!"  
> I couldn't wait to share this chapter, second part of it will be riddled with important tidbits, hehe. Was waiting to post it for forever!  
> (second part in 24 hours, because, somehow, the chapter grew to be 10k words, yikes)

The trip to their next location took them almost four hours, which HeeJin spent blissfully sleeping. Even this rest was indispensable - only thanks to it she was standing upright now, an hour before the sunset of this most tiresome and eventful day of her life.

As they got out of the dirigible, she was tempted to lean on one of the girls, but all of them moved all too quickly after the examiners, leaving HeeJin to hurry up after them across the small plateau formed by the flat top of the mountain, which was split all the way across it. This high up, even despite expected echo, there was no sound of the river running at the bottom of the ravine. Dirigible's engines were turned off, both dynastat and rotastat parts of it resting, all two hundred meters of length and seventy of height above four and a half visible floors of the airship still and quiet. Painted face on its front, determined and toothy, was turned towards the pale waning moon, the sunset approaching, Hunter Association's emblem stark on the side.

By Menchi’s request, the Judging Committee dirigible brought them to Split Mountain.

The elderly eccentric man that jumped out of the airship (HeeJin thought that it was her sanity finally leaving her, taking this time form of an old man, for some reason, on the cusp of her mental breakdown) and, actually, saved them all from being thrown out of the exam there and then, turned out to be the committee's head, Chairman Netero.

It was a thing that both nearly pushed her in hysteria and brought her back to reality. HeeJin grabbed onto HyunJin’s tense forearm for stability, wiping away the tears brought just a minute prior by a crashing realization of a total failure and overwhelming fear. Lord, she was _exhausted_. 

She felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to see Chuu’s worried face. For some reason, the girl stood very close to HyunJin and her. When made eye contact, Chuu’s features softened and she hugged HeeJin, a comfort she eagerly took as she listened to the introduction and beginning of the discussion.

Apparently, Chairman Netero saw the need to intervene after disqualification of the whole pool of applicants for _possibly_ unsound reasons, and basically forced Menchi to withdraw her decision with just a few leading words. 

Even if HeeJin was blinking the blurriness away throughout their dialog, trying to regain any semblance of composure, slowly detaching herself from Chuu, barely listening to the start of the exchange, she still caught the staggering amount of respect Menchi had towards the chairman.

All steam left the woman the instant Netero appeared. She backed off, lowering her head.

“...their will to challenge the unknown, you found they lacked the desire?” finished his question Chairman Netero, gaze heavy despite lack of any judgement in his voice. His discolored mustache and long, curled upward beard with its dyed black end sticking upward bobbed with each word. His lengthy eyebrows, reaching two vertically-situated piercings in stretched earlobes, and hair, gathered in a japponese ponytailed topknot, was absolutely white from his age. Despite that fact, his voice was strong, skin, albeit wrinkly, wasn’t flabby and he stood straight and easy on his one-toothed (if HeeJin remembered correctly how that one tall vertical wood plank sole was called) geta. His traditional men’s kimono was, except for a few blue segments on a collar, ends on sleeves and v-shaped symbol on his back, pristine white.

Menchi clasped her hands behind her back, line of sight dipping down for a second, before returning to eye contact. “No…” she paused. She made a motion to shift her weight from one leg to another but aborted the motion halfway, returning to her previous position. “...I got steamed when an examinee belittled the task. And then, when they weren’t taking the task seriously, I got really upset and lost my appetite.”

“Did this inhibit your ability to make a _sober_ evaluation?” continued Netero, keeping a steady eye contact. 

“Well…” Menchi looked down, brows burrowed in helplessness. She closed her eyes, before speaking again. “I admit, I get very _emotional_ about food. And so I’ve failed as an examiner.” She made a deep breath, some tension leaving her shoulders as she lifted her chin up, unclasping her hands. “I’ll resign my post and withdraw my decision.”

Buhara stayed silent during all of it only looking from one of them to another .

HeeJin heard a loud groaning coming from the entrance. The examinee that sailed from the top of the stairs to the top of gates’s tower-shaped support beams was, with effort, lifting himself off the ground.

She swallowed. She wouldn’t’ve survived any of those three hits, not to speak about rising up so soon on her own. Her hand found HyunJin’s fist and held it, for comfort, noticing with a surprise how tense the other girl was.

Chairman Netero contemplatively hummed. “To continue the present test… It would be troublesome to find a new examiner for the stage in the midst of the exam. Instead, I’d like you to keep your task. However,” he leveled his gaze on humbled Menchi, “you will participate in the new test yourself, to set an example for these examinees. How does that sound?”

Menchi blinked in surprise, diving in thought.

“In other words, they’ll know they have a shot,” explained Netero, a hint of a smile heard in his voice.

“All right,” concluded Menchi to herself, lips slowly spreading in a smile. “How about we try boiled eggs?” Rare sounds of surprise drowned in the noise created by the dirigible, landing on the nearest suitable clearing, crushing all trees underneath it. “Chairman? May we get a lift to the Split Mountain?” she asked, a coy smile on her face.

Chairman Netero answered in kind. “Why, yes, of course.”

For the entire time between their agreement and her slumping against one of the corners on the airship, HeeJin was fidgeting nervously, anxious of letting this second chance slip between her fingers.

If this was a test that scrutinized their actual cooking skills again, even a little bit, she was out for sure, exploring unknown or not. She once joked with Thierry, when she was a child, not even ten years old, that cooking an egg was easy and even she can do it properly. Their chef bellowed with laughter and then sat her down and gave her a lecture on what “properly boiled egg” could mean. And then offered to put that newfound knowledge to the test, pointing out all mistakes in the process in his kind, but sly, tone.

She never looked down on boiled eggs ever again.

But looking around the plateau, she did not see any and, edging closer to the ravine, she understood that her worry was silly. Cooking? No, this time it truly was a test of bravery, rather than cooking - half a dozen meters down, between vertical walls, white strings began, with clusters of large eggs hanging on some of them. She couldn’t see the river at the bottom far, far below, covered in mist.

Realisation had her head spinning. _Seriously_?

“This is your task,” said Menchi, pointing at those. “Those are spider-eagle eggs - a rare delicacy!”

A gust of wind from the ravine hit HeeJin and she instinctively took a step back.

“How are we going to get those?” let out one of the confused, or, rather, disbelieving, examinees. She couldn’t blame them. This was leagues above hitting pigs in the forehead.

To her expectant horror, Menchi smirked. “Like this.”

And jumped down.

The crowd instinctively stepped closer, HeeJin no exception. She followed Menchi’s fall with both dread and resignation sitting in the pit of her stomach, half of her wanting to just look away.

Menchi caught onto one of the strings, swinging full circle once, diffusing the momentum by letting go nearing the apex of the curve, before catching the web again. 

For a few long seconds, she stayed there, hanging above the bottomless ravine, fog covering the bottom of it as dead silence wrapped the mountain.

Then, she did the most suicidal thing HeeJin ever saw to be done: she let go of the string, falling again.

Sailing past the bundle, she swiftly grabbed one of the eggs, but the moment quickly passed and the woman was plunging down the ravine, far from either of the walls. Someone in the crowd gasped in fear, but HeeJin’s eyes were glued to the scene, heart pounding in her chest.

She has never been able to look away from a tragedy.

A heartbeat. Another one. (Menchi’s figure was almost in the fog.)

And another.

A gust of wind hit her in the face and her sense of self preservation made her subconsciously try to step back again, but it was blocked by somebody else already standing there.

HeeJin wanted to glance back, but a subtle change below caught her eye. Instead, she leaned closer to the ravine, against the wind that was much stronger from this close, almost thrashing against her. 

Quickly growing, Menchi’s form was seen again, flying towards them.

HeeJin made a sharp disbelieving inhale, as the woman rapidly raised above the split, gliding on air currents closer to their side. Menchi landed neatly on her high heels, a spider-eagle egg in her raised hand and a victorious smirk on her face. 

For a second, wind ceased and there was silence.

It was broken by number 255. “This is insanity,” he protested. “No one in their sane mind would jump down there!”

Before the man even finished talking, as if contradicting him, Killua’s voice rang through the plateau. “Neat!”

“Now there’s a test!” seconded Gon.

Several other people, too, were enthused about this test, rushing towards the ravine.

“Let’s go!”

“W-wait!,” Menchi’s boastful expression shifted to alarmed, raising her free hand, futilely trying to make the examinees pause and listen. “There is another thing I need to tell you!..”

She was unsuccessful, as the determined applicants either failed to hear her through the cheering or plainly ignored the warnings as they jumped down.

Like those examinees, HeeJin wasn’t focused on Menchi. She saw excited Chuu and tight-lipped HyunJin jump among the first ones, along with Gon, Leorio, and others, and attempted to jump with them, but was stopped with a sharp tug on her elbow. She turned around and faced Choerry, who was looking past her at the web. She tried to move her elbow, but it was clasped in a steel grip. 

Her wiggle attempts turned Choerry’s attention to her. “Not here,” she said seriously. “We should jump further down the line.”

Choerry began hurriedly walking by the edge of the ravine, still holding HeeJin’s arm.

“Why?” What was wrong with that zone?

“We should disperse.” At her clueless expression, Choerry added: “I don't trust the strings to hold together with everyone dropping on them."

"I'm pretty sure spider's web is said to be incredibly strong," contradicted HeeJin.

Choerry nodded. "And these aren't nets purposed for catching heavy thrashing prey, they are here just to keep eggs hanging. Besides, this is a spider- _eagle_ 's nest, who knows how much they actually got from both sides?”

HeeJin eyed the web, understanding her friend's worry, feeling unease at the realization. “What about the girls then?” 

Choerry stopped abruptly and let go of her elbow. She stepped closer to the edge, spinning on her heels, putting her back to the ravine. “They will be fine, trust me,” a confident smile crossed the girl's face for a brief moment - and she was gone.

Hastening her motions, HeeJin shrugged off her backpack to minimize weight, but decided to keep the sable on, to not waste _too_ much time by herself. She already was a noticeable weak link for anyone gauging the competition, no need to make herself look also overly paranoid, even if it _was_ true.

HeeJin looked back and saw that there were more than a half of contestants left on the plateau, standing far away from the edge, a lot of them staring dejectedly at their feet.

Some were staring at her.

She averted her eyes and pushed off the edge.

For a few seconds of the fall she was absolutely terrified, her subconscious cursing her up and down. Instinctively, she threw her arms and legs wide apart, like a starfish, but before she could take a notice of this, the string was rapidly approaching her. HeeJin shot out her arms in front of her, hands gripping it in a death grip as soon as they connected with something, tense for a few moments as she bounced on it, eyes closed in residual terror.

She opened them and looked up just in time to see a couple of the examinees let go of the string. HeeJin followed them with her eyes. They each grabbed an egg and went down. And down. And down...

“Let’s go then!” she heard Leorio exclaim.

“Not yet!” hurriedly warned Gon. She couldn’t hear the continuation of the dialog from this distance, so she glanced for the answers at Choerry. The girl wasn’t looking at her, but at the falling examinees and HeeJin returned her gaze to them. 

Men that already got the eggs, also understood that something was wrong, judging by the distant panicked screams, finding no wind to raise them up.

Air currents were periodical, realized HeeJin, face scrunching slightly. With effort, she tore her eyes away, and looked around. Beside those few, who were probably already dead, nobody looked like they were letting go. Some people around Gon’s company were looking at the boy, likely listening to his cue, as he was the one to shout out a warning. 

Searching for her friends, she found HyunJin and Chuu hanging on the same string with five other people, causing her to frown. The latter made eye contact with her and brightly smiled. HeeJin tried to answer in kind, certain her’s was not as unbothered or supportive, so she looked away, for the lack of better direction, seeking the closest egg bundle.

It was relatively close to them. Cautiously, she checked her death grip on the string, whether her hands and fingers obeyed her well, and began to slowly inch away from Choerry, wanting to give both of them more space for maneuver when they were inevitably going to fall down. They were the only ones on the string, thanks to Choerry’s analysis, so HeeJin was not _too_ worried about the strain they put on it. Or else she wouldn’t have been able to move at all.

Seconds slowly ticked by. HeeJin breathed. Inhale, exhale. She stopped moving, content with her new position.

They waited. Ten seconds passed.

A quiet ripping sound echoed through the ravine.

She forcefully continued her inhale after the hitch, and searched for the string that was giving out, eyeing HyunJin and Chuu’s first. It seemed fine, but, on the other hand, people on the one nearby were alarmed, all of them.

Suddenly, there were a couple more echoing sounds of the web’s strain. This time HeeJin saw as it happened - just like she was concerned previously, the string’s structure itself was fine, but the point of its connection to the wall was breaking. The atmosphere became heavier, as it became apparent that the majority of the strings were beginning to break, the only unaffected being theirs and one of the lower hanging ones, almost out of reach of the bundle, with a single man hanging on it.

This problem included Chuu and HyunJin’s string.

A wave of worried murmurs rose and ended equally fast, lasting only a couple of heartbeats. Everyone held their breath. So did HeeJin, glaring at her friend’s string, begging for it to hold on.

 _Scrrp_!

Leorio turned to Gon and hissed so loud, HeeJin heard it. “How much longer?! Webs won’t hold another minute!”

“Not yet,” said Gon, after which another wave of breaking rolled.

“Fuck it!” One of the examinees let go of the string, grabbing an egg from the bundle on his way down. After a second of hesitation, accompanied by grunting of the web, a couple more decided to risk their luck. HeeJin closed her eyes with force, half of her face scrunching, refusing to watch any more people fall.

After a few seconds passed and their lingering screams died, she opened her eyes, gaze instantly flying up to check the girls’ string. She felt a pang of relief intermingled with a deep shame due to it, seeing that there were only four people on it now, which bought them more time.

She noticed that one of the men who had let go, didn’t do so completely, now hanging on the low string where previously was only a single person, who was now glaring at the unwelcomed addition.

Well, HeeJin thought, if there was an emergency above, as many people as possible would try to go for that tactic, not instinctively, but consciously, now. She would be worrying too.

She waited, breathing out for longer than she was inhaling.

They all waited. Despite grunting webs, noone else was letting go.

Seconds dragged out. Her fingers began to hurt from the force she was clutching the web with.

Inhale, exhale... Inhale, exhaaaale...

“Now!” shouted Gon, voice ringing through the ravine, letting go, and, with him, everybody else, including startled HeeJin half a second behind.

Twisting in the air, HeeJin outstretched her arms towards the bundle, successfully grabbing the egg closest to her-

And then she was plummeting.

Her heart hammered in her chest, the wind drying her eyes and her coat flapping desperately above her head and she was falling down, falling, voice stuck in the throat, blocking off her lungs; the walls were nothing but a blur in the corner of her eyes, white spots blinking on them, passing so fast she wouldn’t’ve been able to look at them even if she was able to focus on anything but the quickly approaching fog. Blood was loud in her ears. 

It was a miracle she did not crush the egg clasped desperately in both of her hands.

The fourth heartbeat ended and the horrible moment passed. 

A wall of wind slammed her in the chest, forcing air out of her lungs and _she was no longer falling_!

HeeJin was lifted up, higher and higher! Wheezing, she tried to inhale as the relieved, undoubtedly crazed, smile stretched her lips.

Not only herself, all other applicants were flying up, any noises of surprise or laughter muted by the wind.

She sailed past the webs and the soft light of the setting sun hit her eyes, as they erupted out of the ravine.

HeeJin landed on unsteady legs, almost falling on her knees from lightheadedness.

In both of her hands, the spider-eagle sat.

Cheeks hurting from smiling, her head whipped around, searching for her friends, finding them almost immediately, Choerry landing not far away from her and HyunJin and Chuu standing a dozen meters away from her, all holding their eggs!

She let out a loud overjoyed laughter.

They did it! They all passed the second phase!

* * *

“I should introduce myself properly to all of you,” said Chairman Netero, turning Chuu’s attention away from the barely-night sky and lush mountains, for now visible to her, as the airship was still gaining height. Feeling the spider-eagle egg’s creamy texture and the softest taste she ever experienced from a delicacy food set her in an incredibly lighthearted mood. Neither tense atmosphere, nor the certain people around her could upset that right now. She looked at the elderly man and a short green person near him that they had already seen before. “I am Netero, Chairman of the Judging Committee for this year’s hunter exam. I figured I didn’t need to show up until the final round but now that I’m _here_ ,” he slowly looked around now much smaller contestant pool, only forty-six examinees, smiling crookedly under his bushy mustache, “I suppose, I’ll accompany you for a while and enjoy this nice _edgy_ atmosphere.”

“And my name is Beans,” introduced himself a suit-claden short man by Netero’s side, who was handing out their tags in the beginning of the exam. “We’ll arrive at our destination at eight am tomorrow. Until we notify you, please relax and enjoy the amenities aboard this airship.”

It was little over eight in the evening, which gave them generous twelve hours of rest. What should she do?..

“C’mon, Gon! Let’s explore!”

“You bet!” Killua and Gon had their mind already set. 

Still energetic even after the supposedly taxing day of Hunter exam, they were first to leave the room. Some other applicants halfheartedly grumbled about their enthusiasm, but followed them, the room slowly emptying. 

Chuu approached other girls. If HeeJin felt half as exhausted as she looked, it was a wonder how she hadn’t slumped on the floor yet. There was a small proud thought deep inside of her that Chuu felt pointedly, unused to it being given to anyone but Yves and Go Won.

Choerry, now calm and cheerful and no longer intensely bloodlusting everywhere without care of surrounding people, was, as expected, up and ready to complete this day again several times in a row. 

Albeit it raised some questions, that outburst actually made Choerry more tangible to Chuu. It was irrational and mildly concerning. 

Chuu had to move closer to the nenless girls, expanding her En just barely to cover both of them, forcing out as neutral a feeling as possible while cautiously watching out for the reactions of two openly aggressive people in the room. It was a risk worth taking - if she didn’t, Choerry would’ve hurt them for sure - one of the examinees keeled dead there and then, others had shuddered, gasping for air, frozen in place. None of these even walked out of the airship on the Split Mountain. Grabbing and moving the girls away wasn’t an option - such sudden rapid movements under the nose of a hostile person weren’t a great idea.

But that situation also pinned down several things about Choerry.  
She was _greatly_ interested in not failing, despite her going out of her way for the girls. Her own success was a priority.

She was dangerous. Like, properly dangerous, not to trifle with out of boredom. Her nen told everything Chuu needed to now. Very trained, very intense, very ready to kill.

Related to that: it wasn’t something of concern for Choerry. She went right back to her original self as soon as it was clear she wasn’t out of the race yet. Chuu was pretty sure that that change wasn’t insincere so there’s that. Was it Chuu’s issue that she was taking this too seriously? She wasn’t like this usually...

Then there was a new concern that put her problem with Choerry lower on her priority list: something was wrong with Hisoka. 

Both him and Choerry were ready to attack Menchi, leaking bloodlust, it was only natural that a competent and violent nen-user would catch his attention. But, contrary to what Chuu expected him to do, the magician never indicated that he took note of the girl - he never regarded her in the way he usually does! Even at the airship, on their way to the mountain, where they all lined the entrance hall and corridors of the first floor, he just sat down and began building and destroying his card towers, not much as glancing at the girl.

This was wildly out of character for him. Chuu refused to believe Choerry wasn’t strong enough for him or wasn’t showing potential, she knew the type of people he marked down as fruits. Choerry was right up his alley!

And yet he just ignored her.

Chuu shook her head, forcibly shoving her worries aside. There will be time to think about it later.

HyunJin, middle-ground between them (and the one least troubling Chuu, bless her heart) was keeping up the weird staring at Netero, which she was doing ever since the man appeared. No surprise there. Chuu was aware of the Hunter Bylaw that prohibited Hunters from revealing the existence of nen to civilians and could only guess where the twenty - thirty? - meter drop fit into that. No wonder it caught the girl's attention.

In fact, HyunJin was staring at him as he was walking a meter away past them. Chuu liked the girl, but, by god, was she not subtle!

“What’re thee plans?”

HeeJin turned to Choerry, blinking with effort. “Bed.”

“Why, don’t want to hang out a little more, while we have the time?” overly innocently asked Choerry.

“No,” said HeeJin with a blank expression. “Goodnight.”

She turned towards the exit.

“I have some plans too,” hurriedly said HyunJin with a focused frown. “See you later.”

“Goodnight,” they said in unison, watching the girls leave.

After a beat of silence, Chuu glanced at Choerry. “What about you?”

A shrug. “Walk around for a bit, call my friends, maybe eat some more.”

“You want to eat after that egg?” raised her eyebrows Chuu.

Choerry defensively raised open palms. “Hey, I am a young growing girl with quick metabolism, I need to eat my vitamins.”

“Right, you need to eat well after spending energy,” agreeably nodded Chuu. “How old are you, young growing girl? You were the only one not mentioning it in the swamp.” She exited an almost empty room by that point, Choerry following her.

“Seventeen.”

“Aww,” cooed Chuu, grin stretching her lips, “you are a baby!” 

Choerry snorted and leveled her gaze in mock-offence. ”You are not that much older than me!”

Chuu ignored her. “A _baby_! So cute! I want to pat your head, can I? Or pinch your cheek, which do you prefer? Do you want both?..”

“You sound like my best friend,” grumbled the girl in fond exasperation, looking briefly out of the window, before facing her again. “Well, how about your plans?” ignored her gushing altogether Choerry.

“He-he. Same,” graciously allowed the change of topic Chuu. “Though I, probably, won’t be eating anything. Tea would be nice,” at which Cherry nodded, agreeing.

They were leisurely walking towards the dining hall, orienting by the signs hanging here and there. Some people were talking in the corridors, some were heading in the same direction as they were, but the majority seemed to be going towards resting rooms.

For a while, they walked in silence.

“Hey, I was thinking about your friends…” spoke up Choerry as they were going down the stairs. “You mentioned they passed in the previous years. Do they have a specialization?” 

“No,” said Chuu. “Probably never will. We aren’t really aiming to be full-time Hunters.”

Choerry hummed in understanding.

“And yours?” asked Chuu.

“Sea Hunter and Crime Hunter,” Choerry paused briefly, glancing at another examinee that was stuck deep in thought that they walked by, before she added, “though the first one is more like “Ocean Hunter” and the other tends to operate more within the Blacklist than anything else, but, officially, they are called Sea and Crime Hunters.”

A thought occurred to Chuu. “Do _you_ have a specialization in mind?”

A proud smile instantly bloomed on Choerry’s face, her whole posture puffing out. “Yes! I am going to be a Botanical Hunter!”

Chuu turned it over in her head, which Choerry apparently took as a sign to continue, speaking passionately. “I am not overly interested in the challenge of collecting the rare ones, but the mere idea of discovering new, never previously seen sorts is aaah!” Choerry’s focus was ahead of her, somewhere in the ceiling, raised fists tightly clenched. “Something I am the first to find! Something that could be later used in medicine or new food or or for science or for further breeding, Chuu, there are _so many possibilities_ for newly discovered species! Recent ecological restoration of Majma? Made real by using gnarly violet gurdo - gnarly is a part of the name - as a base for purification solution and it was discovered only five years ago. Vaccine for heyan pox? That was modified costilia vine!..” Choerry broke off in a rant, jumping from one usage of a recently discovered plant to another, be it some amazing innovation or just a new pretty decoration for rich people. She was equally excited about each of them, listing off their usage or unique visuals with the same starry-eyed expression.

At some point, in a middle of heated description of some bioluminescent lichen that Choerry gathered two month ago for her own plant breeding project, the girl snapped her focus towards Chuu, gaze no longer over the horizon, but staring fiercely at her. Her grin was impossibly wide.

Chuu was unable not to smile in kind. It has been a while since she saw someone talk with so much joy about their passion.

It was... really nice. 

She missed that.

“It sounds great!” Chuu said, eyes crinkling in a delight she didn’t feel. “You also get the rights to name then weirdly, don’t you?”

“I do!” Choerry laughed. “When I was a kid I even made a list of made up names, the sillier the better!”

“Were you always sure what you wanted to do?”

“Mmmm, yes? Kinda?” Choerry looked thoughtful. “I always wanted to work with plants, but I didn’t knew the direction or scope until I met my friends. At first I just wanted to tend to my garden at home, then decided to work at a botanical garden and then I learned more about plant selection. I was thrilled by the thought of it, but that then opened my eyes that it was the _discovery_ of something new that was the most exciting part! It didn’t mean plant selection or breeding wasn’t for me, but the action of _finding_ something new in the wilds is different,” Choerry lightly drummed fingertips against her lips in contemplation, entering half-empty dining hall. “By then I already met my friends and it clicked that the life of a Botany Hunter is what I always wanted!”

Chuu nodded along, smiling softly. “That sounds great. My congratulations on being almost there!”

“Thank you!” grinned Choerry proudly as they approached the buffet, conversation coming to a halt.

* * *

Chairman Netero watched one of the applicants, a young woman with tag 390, practically storm at him. She was focused on him ever since he appeared at the second phase, either overly bold or unbothered to hide her curiosity. Of course there were plenty of people eyeing him almost all the time but rarely one had a look and gall like they were about to demand something from him.

"Excuse me, may I ask a question," she rather stated, than asked, even before reaching the dialog distance. When she did, 390 faced him, confidently making eye contact. He smirked - he liked fighty spirits!

Beans looked between them and Netero nodded to both.

“Sure,” he said as his secretary headed to the examiners’ dining room, leaving their exchange in relative privacy, nobody else currently in the hallway, “you were rather adamant about your interest this entire time, so don’t be shy, I am all ears.”

She did not pause to ponder if that might be sarcasm. With a nod, 390 went straight to business. “How had you landed unharmed?” 

Straightforward indeed. He huffed in his mustache, leaning forward with a kind expression. “I spent my life dedicated to training,” he said, staring her dead in the eye. “It did wonders for my strength and longevity, as you can see. Well over one hundred and still walking by my own!” Netero nodded earnestly, wide-eyed, straightening again.

390 didn’t seem off-put, chewing on that thought for a bit, before squinting. “What kind of training?” 

“You know, martial arts!” Her eyebrow twitched as it clicked that he was full of shit and toying with her. Netero grinned, watching her look him up and down, jaws clenched. His unwillingness to answer straight away and, likely, no intention of telling her a single thing, was taken as a personal challenge. “We, Hunters, need to be well-versed in them.”

“I am aware of that,” _she_ was now staring at him challengingly. Then, unexpectedly, she pointed at his tall tengu-geta. “Are your shoes also “well-versed in martial arts”? Such a hit that should have been, and they are still able to hold on their own.”

He laughed. Nice to know that at least someone paid attention to details! “They very much are!”

“What,” the girl paused, breathing in and out, trying to think of another approach after reaching a deadend with this one. Netero waited, amused. “What martial art’s school are they from?”

“Why such interest?” he asked instead.

“Your entrance left an impression.”

He hummed. She was yet to look away.

Netero nodded. “Sure did. Say what,” he magnanimously allowed, “if you become a Hunter, I will tell you what martial school it is.”

She huffed, crossing arms. “If I become a Hunter, I could find it on my own.”

“Would you bother? Don’t you have a personal reason for applying?”

She grimaced. 

“It might take time out of your hunt, you know?” continued Netero.

“It _is_ my reason!” she said, dissatisfaction dense in her tone, having to resolve to reveal something she didn’t want to.

Ah. “Then, how about I tell you where to find a willing teacher?” he offered. If this was not the first time she witnessed nen, when was it?

Well, he watched wide golden eyes on a round face squint in thought, Netero had a wild guess, where was the first. Unlikely coincidence, but on a rare occasion Hunter had a child, it wasn’t uncommon of them also seeking the title, whether they knew of their lineage or not. It was unlikely she didn’t know of Areli - the Hunter left a tangible, if relatively small, legacy, settling his child with it, if he remembered correctly. Shouldn’t 390 be older then?.. No, more time had passed than he initially thought, it was Areli’s _grand_ daughter demanding him to tell her about nen.

He smirked under his mustache. In any case, the old pacifist's work had nothing to do with jumping off of high places. Netero went to visit his museum once when the man died, paying respect to the Hunter’s lifelong work, so dearly _his_.

The girl hesitated, torn between attempting to go for a lower-hanging fruit, that, she had to intuitively understand, was an impossible one to rip off or even graze with her fingers at all; and going for the agreement that pushed her target further, potentially a whole year more, away from her.

After a minute of thought, where her sight was turned so deeply inward, Netero could have just walked away without her noticing, the girl slowly nodded. “Agreed.”

The word carried weight and he echoed it. That settled it. Technically, an empty deal, but it won’t be difficult to direct her to someone willing to teach. He could find her someone from shingen-ryu school, even. “What is your name?”

"HyunJin,” responded a much feistier copy of the Nature Hunter.

"Well, HyunJin, I will see you at the last phase, then,” with a short nod, he turned away, heading towards his cabin. After a few seconds, there was rustling behind him and distancing footsteps leading in the opposite direction.

He chuckled to himself. Usually, freshly-minted Hunters were left to find out about the secret second exam by themselves, until they sought out or stumbled over an experienced nen-user. However, since HyunJin already noticed the existence of nen and was after it, he could point her in the right direction. No harm in that. Whose time was it to get a student dropped on their head?..

He turned the corner, before seeing two children, sitting in the window-lined hall, laughing.

He would think about that if she passes the exam, he decided, sly grin stretching his lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, the airships in HxH actually have a name - hybrid airships (rotastat is an airship with propellers, like on helicopter, and dynastat is with plane elements, all HxH airships have both in different proportions). I won't be using the term, just assume they all are like that with different configurations for different purposes  
> Alternative (third or fourth, I don't remember) title for wabrw is "Coincidences keep coinciding". Previously yyx ((why why BYE)) weren't planned to sometimes have business with Hisoka but then they did (instead of oec). And only after I began shifting thing around to accommodate that, I realized a funny thing about YYX working with HISOKA  
> Another interesting thing, this one not surviving application of logic during the first edit of the plotlines, - HyunJin almost got herself trained by Netero. But that was way too Mary Sue, so the idea was buried in closed casket, never to be resurfaced in the plot again


	7. Puzzle pieces, part 2

They put their trays on the opposite sides of the table, Choerry brazenly sitting on it, throwing her legs to the other side, before sheepishly looking around to see if anyone paid attention. Chuu jokingly tutted, smiling, but didn’t think about it twice, sitting down.

She got some tea for herself, along with a couple sandwiches - she wasn't hungry yet, but who knew when she would be able to eat next time this break? Choerry, on the other hand, had a full dinner on her tray and a large cup of coffee.

They ate in silence, listening to the international news broadcasted on several monitors hanging around the room. Plot about an exhibition of Rudalph Justo held in Milaw, a famous surrealist painter and photographer, whose works were rarely shown, ended as she began chewing her last sandwich. 

Next, a hot new sensation, that the presenter plastered on a serene expression for, clasping hands on the table, - a cruise ship called Tethys mysteriously disappeared in the Gaftlou sea. “ _Disappeared_ ”. Its mayday message barely got out the position they were in before cutting short, leaving initial reasons of distress call unknown. Rescue airships and boats arrived as fast as it was possible at its estimated location, but found no signs of Tethys, almost no debris, and not a single survivor.

More than the mystery of the causes behind this, the plot revolved around describing the list of politically prominent or just otherwise influential people who were on Tethys.

The catastrophe itself happened in the most north part of Gaftlou Sea after it left the waters of the Bottoranean Sea, far from the nearest land and, more importantly, on the edge on an undefined line where the Moebius Lake started. The rescue airship and search brigades, both water and air-operating ones, were there as soon as possible, combing for any survivors or clues as to what had happened, working so quickly, that in two hours there was a solid wall scanning both air and water.

But nothing. Not a single survivor or body, boat or submarine.

Needless to say, as much as it was most (but still not very much) likely there was something from the Moebius Lake responsible for that, the situation was getting _exceptionally_ politically tense.

After another minute of mournfully describing the beauty and engineering might that was Tethys, fulfilling the quota of both empathizing political loss and and attempt to make ordinary people care about it in conjunction with loss of the ship and other passengers, news moved to riots in Neta Bolgad and Chuu lost interest.

She sipped her tea, musing aloud. “Would Sea Hunters be called to assist on this or?..”

Choerry shook her head, somewhat uncertainly. “Really depends. Not all Sea Hunters are… interested in such work. Once man-caused reasons would be ruled out, they are more likely to look into it, otherwise, doubtful - not their field of work. Discovery and research - yes, investigations - nah. While Sea Hunters usually don’t ignore a newly discovered shipwreck if they stumble upon it, they have a lot of other things to do. Preliminary inspection of a recently sunken ship isn’t one of them. There is _a lot_ of underwater, much more than there is land.” Choerry shook her head, this time dejectedly. “You don’t really know how much it really is, until you spend your time with a Sea Hunter for a month or two.”

“Aren’t there sea plants for you to discover?”

“Not at _that_ depth and I am more keen on working on overwater flora.” Choerry took the remains of the bread and used it to gather the leftovers from the plate. “There _is_ one Sea Hunter, who is interested in untangling mysteriously lost ships, but this one,” she pointed at the screen that was playing a short phone-recorded clip of the riot, “is thirty years too young to catch their attention.”

Makes sense, Chuu supposed. 

She took another sip. “Guesses?”

“Hmmm… Someone indebted to a young mafia family - or loyal to one - enough for a suicidal mission? Some sort of personal debt or grudge?” Choerry pushed an empty plate away from her, taking her cup of coffee off the tray. “Or, perhaps, someone made a _really_ intense covenant,” she said less legibly, momentarily widening her eyes for emphasis, as she dumped two sticks of sugar into her cup.

* * *

Pressing her forehead to the window, Chuu stared at the densely gleaming city they were sailing over, her hand pressing the phone to her chest. 

What would she tell Yves and Go Won? What _should_ she tell Yves and Go Won? 

She hadn’t done anything incriminating to think of forgoing the message entirely, not yet, at least, but the joy they will have over the possibility of her gaining new friends was overshadowed by her own worry and conflicting emotions. She already basically took HeeJin and HyunJin under her wing, she accepted that, but she never has been in a situation like this before. Was it possible to be friends with them but more of an acquaintance with Choerry? Or was it a package deal? Chuu herself was more or less slotted in the group at eleven which made them her friends by default. The previous friendships she had kinda dwindled down after that - either they grew distant or _died_.

It wasn’t even like she was _constantly_ worried. Just… more taxing then usual.

Sadly, Chuu couldn’t even fully root her distrust of Choerry in a potential of danger to their squad - even if that was a very legitimate worry, with apparent Crime Hunter attached to the girl - but for the most part it was a recent barrier. Could two years still be classified as recent or?..

She grimaced, closing her eyes. At times like this, Chuu thought, she disliked being the most emotionally aware between the three of them.

Despite her current indecision, she _needed_ to leave a message. Who knows when she will get another chance? Chuu knew they were fine, but they might worry whether she was okay or not, being in the same vicinity as Hisoka. They didn’t know of anything else yet which looped her thoughts back on the issue at hand. Should they?..

Chuu sighed. Just... A quick message and then sleep. She would keep it short - this day both took and gave more than she expected. She opened Postcard and pressed on a record prompt, holding it for a few moments. Chuu took a deep breath and forcibly smiled, letting the button go.

“Hi~! I am currently on an airship, heading towards the third phase. You would _not_ believe how eventful this day was! The Exam is going well so far, some weirdos present, as expected, but also, hey, I found maybe three new friends?.. Two for sure, the third is a question mark?” ending the question on an uncertain note, she grimaced as if they could see her. “It’s complicated. The first phase was stamina-oriented, we had to run a marathon, the second one,” Chuu sighed, taking a pause. ”Second one was a mess, starting with cooking and ending with jumping down the ravine. I nearly poisoned our examiners, ugh,” she dragged a hand down her face. ”Can you imagine the Gardener's face if that happened?.. Other than that, it was not all that bad. Hope your mission is going well, keep safe, eat well! Love you! Mvah~!”

* * *

Choerry dialed the first number and stood, waiting. Since the majority of the applicants were already sleeping, the halls were empty, the only stragglers far and few between, mostly on the floor over her, where their resting quarters were. The rooms were expected to house much less people further down the line, on the last one or two stages, and were currently packed with occupants lining up walls and huddled in groups on the floor.

She listened to the beeps, looking at the stars. Choerry slowly rolled from balls of her feet to tiptoes and then back. After a while, an autoresponder offered to leave a message.

She ended her call and went to voicemail in Postcard, clearing her throat.

“Hello! Exam is a lot more fun than you told me, traitors! I now have new friends, three girls my age! They are very nice and doing their best and it would be great if you were able to meet them! Two stages have already passed, a marathon test and then a test from Gourmet Hunters! Gourmets were Menchi and Buhara, have you heard of them? The other one was called Satotz, I don’t know his specialty, but he is violet and _very_ classy. And walks funny! He made us run for hours! First in a tunnel, then up the stairs, then through a swamp. Fog was extra thick and it was swarming with many hostile creatures and plants! Two of my friends got lost but found their way back to the group… Though Chuu and I returned and followed them for a bit to be safe! Afterwards we had to cook a pig to be tested by, you know, gourmets, and it was a complete disaster. They can't cook, so many people just roasted them as-is and Menchi got angrier and angrier with each one! I didn’t even get my turn, she declared that the phase ended with everyone failing. Since she failed everyone because she was throwing a fit and not for any solid reason, Chairman Netero had to intervene and we got to do another test! It was jumping into the ravine to get spider-eagle eggs, they were _so_ delicious, you should try one someday! Um, what else?.. Oh, right, it took me so long to cook my dish because my initial one got ruined by other examinee. I planned to pay him back after the phase, but then I got failed, got angry, kinda forgot about him and then he died in the ravine.” She sighed, then frowned and added to herself in a quieter voice. “Speaking of, I should throw away those berries.” Choerry leaned against the window, eyeing the river they flew above, before returning to the message. “So! Our examiners are what you would’ve expected, but there are enough of the weird applicants too! There is one covered in pins and the other one looks like a jester and just drips bloodlust everywhere. My new friend, Chuu, said that the second one was disqualified last year after nearly killing an examiner. The difference in levels of applicants this year is _crazy_.” She paused, mulling over what else there was interesting that day. “We are currently on an airship, heading towards the third phase. We get a night to rest - and eat, however dinner obviously paled compared to spider-eagle eggs - so I'm going to end here and go! Have fun!”

She hung up and selected another number, this time immediately going for Postcard, keeping the message short.

“Wow, you dirty, sneaky, _filthy_ liar! Hunter Exam is so boring, you said, no challenges at all, you said, examinees are soooooo weak, you said. Liar! Fool! And a loser! Guess who is having fun and making friends! So much is going on here, I _pity_ you and your exam year,” Choerry poured all dramatism she had in that last phrase, throwing hand over her forehead for complete effect. After a several seconds long pause she broke into giggles. “Have a lot to tell you when we meet next time, so just you wait! Hope you are having fun! See you later!”

Since the third one of her best friends already explicitly told her she was not to be contacted for a while, at _all_ , she left no message. By nature of her job, Kim Lip had periods of time where she went completely silent. She was used to it. In fact, Choerry was the most contact-ready, compared to them, unavailable only in places without coverage or when invited to accompany one of them on serious jobs which was not _that_ often.

With her last call she immediately went to voicemail, since it would be a late night at home, her cousin already sleeping, and, as soon as she heard the prerecorded message, Choerry felt a fond smile growing on her face. 

"Hello, Yerim! I’m currently on an airship, flying towards the next stage of the exam. I already passed two stages! The first one had a lot of running, _hours and hours_ of running. For a while it was just the tunnel, then stairs, can you imagine running half an hour on stairs? Yerim, who even needs such long stairs?!" Choerry unconsciously started gesturing at this point. "Then we had a fifteen-minute pause. Then more running! This time through a swamp. Speaking of, I also have new friends! They are mostly my age too and very friendly! You would love them! I will be sure to bring them home at some point!.. A lot of other examinees are strange though." The girl briefly frowned, but began smiling again almost instantly. "The second stage was cooking! We had to catch a pig and cook it adequately for a gourmet to accept. I thought it was easy until some idiot applicants angered one of the examiners by dismissing their occupation. And then they roasted their pigs whole, Yerim! It _looked_ unappetizing! And presented them to a _gourmet_! A true disaster!" She turned her back to the window, leaning against the windowsill, and eyed her shoes and feet that she just cleaned from dried mud. "So, in general, I’m having a lot of fun and generally out of the harm’s way. I will go rest now. Hope you are doing well, too! Hear from you soon! Bye!"

* * *

Her first _conscious_ thought as she was being shaken awake, was that her body was _murdering_ her. Had she ever felt so thoroughly pushed through a meat grinder? No, definitely no. Unless this was the case with brain blocking especially painful experiences, in which case she _did not_ want to know.

It was an experience beyond her soreness. Before HeeJin knew what was going on, her sable was halfway unsheathed and she was hissing from pain in Choerry’s face. That was when she caught up with the message her muscles sent and also realized she was nudged awake by her friend, not somebody else.

The girl was not offended at that, thankfully, and held out an unscrewed bottle of water, instead of asking anything. At that moment HeeJin understood that she was blessed by befriending a literal angel.

Miracle of her being able to get anywhere on her own merit was also called Choerry. She silently watched as HeeJin slowly stood, holding onto the wall for her life, before hurrying out the man who had the privilege of occupying the bed that night since he arrived at the room first (throwing out, her subconscious corrected - when man smirked in refusal, the girl carried him bridal-stile to the door and threw him there, a scene so weird, HeeJin wasn’t sure she hadn’t dreamed it up). She wasn’t clear, why, but then Choerry swept her off her feet, carried her to the bed and gave her the fastest and most brutal massage session she ever experienced. Choerry was good, don’t get her wrong, HeeJin was just unprepared for the assault on her tense muscles.

A unique morning for sure.

Feeling almost human, she visited showers which she was too exhausted for the previous day. She wasn’t the only one there, the other being a woman she was pretty sure she remembered carrying a sniper rifle, and HeeJin hadn’t looked up once when she couldn’t inconspicuously face the other way from her. She removed her lenses and mascara off of her moles before the shower, leaving her pretty recognizable. HeeJin carefully wasted time, silently beginning the woman to be reasonable about time left before landing and leave first. Luckily, she did. 

HeeJin was hastily towel-drying her hair as she was jumping into her spare clothes, when an announcement was made about a slight delay for an hour or so, causing her inwardly howl in joy.

Humming from boosted mood, shifting her previous outfit from washing machine into drying one, hoping that it would be ready by the time they got to the next phase and she wouldn’t have to put it in her backpack while still damp.

At breakfast she sat to the other girls, feeling as best as she could in these circumstances. As they were expected to already reach their destination, the majority of the people already finished their meals and left, leaving the room not as crowded as it must have been. The international channel turned on at the dining hall was of little interest to her, disasters and thievery not something she looked into (and even so, there were better sources for news than, well, news, that one she learned young), allowing her to focus on an unhurried conversation as she ate. 

Chuu and Choerry were already done with their food when they reached the most predictable topic.

“So, why are you taking the Exam?” addressed Choerry them brightly. “I already can guess Chuu’s reasoning, but what about you two?”

She could? Ah, right, they got to talk when she crashed. HeeJin thought of a most positive way to frame her reasoning, slowly stirring sugar in her tea.

The table lapsed into silence.

“Okay, got it, too personal,” said Choerry in the same upbeat manner. “So what do you think of our examiners?”

HeeJin quickly shook her head. “No, no! I mean, yes, but, I was just choosing the phrasing, just give me a second...” she clasped her hands in front of her, staring at her fiddling thumbs. Truth or omission, truth or omission?..

HyunJin looked up from her second serving of omelette with personalized toppings. “I want access to information only Hunters get,” she said.

“Just information?” raised her eyebrows Choerry. “Not benefits or opportunities?”

“No. I am looking for an answer… There was an unnatural event near my town and I want to know what happened there,” said HyunJin, gathering the last bits of her breakfast.

“How unnatural?” asked Chuu.

“ _Supernatural_.”

Choerry hummed. “Then it _is_ a great position to look for the explanation.” 

HyunJin nodded sagely, biting off half of the bun.

Well, if they aren’t prying types… “I need a document.”

The girls stared at her with unreadable expressions.

“An identification, recognizable as official around the world,” she hurriedly added, her fingers fidgeting under the table. Should have she said it was for legal protection? Or else, lied completely?

Something flashed in Choerry’s eyes and she lifted her chin in understanding. “How many fields have you filled on an application form?”

Her jaws wet slack for a moment before pressing together tensely. Was she too conspicuous?

Before she could form an answer, Choerry closed her eyes, raising both open palms, nodding regally. “I have no idea of the specifics, you’re good. You are well-behaved and seemingly indulged, but that’s not _too_ noticeable,” she elaborated, waving her hand pacifyingly.

She did not feel like she was good, she felt like she should shave off her hair after the exam, instead of just shortening it. Should she pretend to be a boy for a while? Her voice _was_ sufficiently deep, that might've work if she didn't talk much…

Crap, had she made a mistake not having a full disguise for the exam?!

“You are really pretty, but not memorable enough, relax,” said Chuu, as if reading her thoughts, but, probably, just seeing the building panic on her face. She smiled reassuringly, pushing HeeJin’s cup of tea closer to her before turning to Choerry, switching the topic. “And what is your guess about me?”

“Benefits,” stated Choerry as HeeJin clasped the cup for stability. “You could’ve gotten information from your friends that already passed. And you told me you weren’t after the Hunter lifestyle.” 

Chuu leaned back on one arm, thoughtfully eyeing Choerry. “You aren’t against that? I will be using my Hunter title for whatever.”

“No,” Choerry gave her thumbs up. “I do not care what you do with your license. Being Hunter is different from getting a license. You aren’t a Hunter just because you got a piece of plastic, there is more to it. You can do whatever you want with the benefits!”

Chuu slowly nodded, seemingly deep in thought.

“And you?” HeeJin turned to Choerry, shifting conversation to the only unknown.

Choerry smiled so brightly, HeeJin’s worries almost completely evaporated. Almost.

After more than an hour later, in which she even got to make a full set of her stretches, getting a chance to show off her split done with one leg on the backpack for extra angle, they finally saw their destination in the distance. When HeeJin looked in the window, she was clearheaded enough to come to two conclusions.

First, that tower was incredibly tall, the top of it lost in the low clouds.

Second, that came as a startling realization after the first one, amplifying it, - it was _wide_.

To land on top of, the dirigible steered upward and HeeJin watched in anticipation as the tower grew and grew, approaching. 

She was still a bit dazed by the fact that she was stepping on a real-life Babylonian tower, when she got out of an airship. By Choerry’s estimation (HeeJin's distance guessing was spotty at best), it was almost two kilometers in diameter and, after hearing that, she decided not to think about it’s height.

It was cold, but not as windy as she feared. The tower was built out of large concrete slabs, both the platform and its completely vertical, cylinder-shaped base. 

When all of them got out and initial rhetorical murmurs died down, Beans cleared his throat.

“We are at the top of Trick Tower. This is where you enter the third phase. As for the test itself, the examiners have informed me that you have seventy-two hours to reach its base alive.”

Seemed… reasonable, unless they expected them to climb on the outer walls. She _hoped_ that was not the case as she watched nearby clouds.

The dirigible rose into the air and the loudspeaker turned on, loud enough to be heard through rotary wings and barely working, at that moment, turbines.

“Begin your descents! Good luck to all of you!” 

Slowly, the crowd started ambling in different ways, the forty-six of them soon to be barely seen on the expanse of this platform. HeeJin did a quick head count, as they walked away. Frowned, stopping. Counted again.

“Something happened?” asked HyunJin, Chuu and Choerry hopping in a different direction, almost racing to the edge.

“There were forty-six examinees passing the second phase, weren’t there?” No, she was right the first time. Weird.

“Yes,” HyunJin cocked her head in confusion, also looking at the wandering applicants.

“There are only forty-four now,” slowly said HeeJin. “I _did_ count us.” HyunJin blinked in puzzlement and her eyes began jumping from person to person, checking for herself. “We lost two people somewhere.”

“Huh. Weird,” seconded her thoughts HyunJin.

Silence wrapped them again. They slowly walked towards the edge of the tower, more to get away from other applicants than to approach it. Time limit was strictly set, examinees having only seventy-two hours, but HeeJin desperately wanted to delay facing the dangers below these slabs, even if just for a few minutes, and HyunJin seemed to be indulging her for a while, until she decided that “enough” was “enough”. 

HyunJin shook off a slightly melancholic mien she had, looking to the edge of the tower and facing her. “Do you think the secret doors are just scattered wherever?”

“Probably,” agreed HeeJin. It was the only logical conclusion of what an entrance looked like - trapdoors, hidden in the smaller rectangular slabs. She turned around and squinted, trying to see what other people were doing, but they were scattered way too far for her to see clearly. “We should search for ours. Unless you want to look off the edge?” she noticed two familiar figures running towards them and waved her arm to show that they were noticed.

“I’ll pass,” said HyunJin. “Don’t trust the possible wind there.”

“Ah,” lowered her arm HeeJin, turning to the girl. “You’re right. I was hesitating since yesterday's ravine - not looking forward to that experience so soon - but you made that fear sound more grounded.”

HyunJin nodded, looking away.

HeeJin tilted her head. For whatever reason, the girl got less spirited as soon as the tower showed over the horizon. HeeJin was in no condition yesterday to keep track of her friends’ moods, but, maybe, the first day of the exam was more taxing for HyunJin than she gave it credit.

Smiling softly, HeeJin gave HyunJin’s hand a quick comforting squeeze, hoping that her eyes conveyed the support and understanding she intended. Her reward was HuynJin’s momentary jolt of surprise and, after a second, a small smile. To her bewilderment, the girl returned the hold for a few moments, before they both parted their hands.

(The fact that amount of comfort she got in last two days was more than what HeeJin received in almost half a year was a depressing thought and it was shoved far away before she could take notice of it)

“Have you looked over the edge?” asked giddily Choerry, barrelling into them. “We are _so high_!”

“No, we decided that, maybe, another time,” said HeeJin, catching Choerry by elbows, steadying her. “You?” she asked, knowing the obvious answer.

“We did!” replied Chuu, coming to a stop on her own, before Choerry could open her mouth. “It is amazing! The walls are so even, you see them gradually melting in one another in the perspective. It is also possible to climb it down, there are enough handholds for a skilled climber,” HyunJin inhaled in exasperation on her right, “but probably shouldn’t be done - some gigantic ugly creatures are flying close-”

“-And we both think that they are a safeguard against that,” finished for her Choerry. “So how is a secret door hunt going?”

“Not great,” said HeeJin, scratching her head. Huh, her hair was still a little bit damp, she should get her beanie off. “We were kinda lost in thought for a while and didn’t look for it.”

“Neither did we,” shrugged Choerry. “Shall we, then?”

They found the first door soon enough, but Chuu, who found it, opted to help others to find theirs instead of going down. Now that they knew what size of slabs they were looking for, the rest of the search was finished in under ten minutes.

“We probably won’t see each other for some time,” stated Choerry looking at her door, as they gathered around it. Each of them picked one and the last one automatically went to her.

“Most likely,” replied HyunJin, smiling. “Good luck, everyone.”

“See you at the bottom,” said HeeJin, feeling nervous at the prospect of having to do this all by herself. Breathe in, breath out. If she couldn’t theoretically do it, she would’ve failed long ago. She _can_ do it.

“I’ll do a countdown!” nodded Chuu, hopping to her door, the furthest one.

HeeJin returned to hers and stood in front of it. For the first time since the beginning, she would be as alone as possible. Gratitude she felt for the support and help she got from the girls was difficult to put into words, but it was time for her to do her best. By herself.

Chuu threw her arm up into the air, three fingers outstretched. With a small wave, she held it up again, two. One. Chuu raised fist and swung it down.

They stepped forward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :3c Puzzle pieces. So many, hehe  
>  _Threeee_ best friends? Whaaaaaaaaat?! :D  
> A very interesting detail is buried deep in stuff Choerry said in this chapter (I won't tell in which part) *giggles* Don't worry, it's hard to find, so if you miss it, there would be other hints (it got there without consulting me first, I myself found it only by paranoid checking (this is a hint to a hint), so no pressure!), think of it more as of an easter egg. After her secret will become known to you, I will point it out!
> 
> Now, a serious note: I will be taking a bit of a break. Was feeling kinda down for the last couple weeks and I am almost at the threshold of chapters that were at least reread after the first draft. A chapter after the next one will need a complete rewrite, I already know that, ugh  
> I am going to return somewhere closer to September or in its first week  
> (Maybe in the meantime I will finish some art that has been collecting dust for forever)  
> Anyway, you are welcome to come to chat to this fic's dedicated [twitter](https://twitter.com/garlicTangerine), or ask theoretical questions at [it's ask](https://ask.fm/tfublin), if you have potentially spoilery theories/questions  
>  _Please_ tell me what you think of wabrw so far! I'm dying to know your thoughts!
> 
> Somewhere between now and continuation of the exam there will be an intermission  
> (Intermissions is where I explore something not directly connected to the plot of an act and not necessarily about loona! But they _will_ be relevant. Think of it as setting up the stage for the future (If you think structure of acts and intermissions reminds you of something, you are not mistaken)  
> Seeeeee ya!


	8. Intermission: Deadlines

Agnes smiled down at the water below. 

The Bottoranean Sea smiled back at her, reflecting an unrecognizable reflection in its small waves, trapped between dock and a cruiser.

The sun had yet to climb to its apex, it being rather morning than midday, but the rays were already heating up the concrete of the pier and metal handrails she was carefully leaning against. The only respite provided here, under seaman’s bored eye, was a canopy over the ramp with the Tethys’s logo printed on it, and a faint cooling that the water provided. Both were welcomed - Agnes was of those people who very much preferred chilly weather.

Waves glubbed against the unmoving ship, setting her at ease despite the mess of a situation she was currently in. All the rush she had to be in order to get here in time, only to be told to wait because communication was broken somewhere on the other side.

Glub, gl-glub. Glub-glub. Gl-

“Agnes Seaver?”

Her attestant finally arrived. 

The seaman that blocked her way turned to a tall middle-aged woman, her emerging wrinkles, adding severity to her stare. Either authority position or the sea (depending on how long she had the job) caused her look older than she was, black eyes digging into her’s, the tidy feminine visage a direct contrast to her own ragged travel appearance. Agnes recognized her from the photos she googled on her way here. Felicja Wiśniewski.

“That’s me,” she said, smiling tiredly. She handed her passport and a copy of the signed contract over for inspection, but the woman made only one cursory glance at her photo before handling them back.

“Get on board, there is no time to laze around.” Felicja turned around, her long skirt swirling around ankles as she strode away. Agnes hurried after, tugging up a small luggage that barely reached the middle of her thigh. As she got off the ramp, the seaman locked an easily climbable gate with low grumble. She sent him a small helpless smile, apologetically rising eyebrows, but he was already walking away. 

In the meanwhile, Felicja pushed forward, not waiting for anyone, much less her, continuing speaking: “Whatever Jimmel got himself into this time, the timing was _terrible_. Since you are his substitution, I would believe you’re at the very _least_ decent, and you should hope so too. We absolutely _do not_ have time to search for someone else,” the woman shot a sharp glance at her, as if warning. Agnes pressed her lips. She was better than decent, thank you for your concern! Whatever standard you held here, she would meet it and surpass, leaving it in dust! 

Besides, wasn’t it Felicja’s responsibility to have plans prepared for unforeseen situations like this? Seemed like someone’s bad management skills were showing.

She kept that thought to herself, nodding instead, frowning. 

“What is expected of me?” she asked, trying to push down the irritation of someone’s doubts of her skills. They turned the corner and Agnes hurried to line up with the older woman’s flying stride. They were entering the fancy part of the ship, almost-new red-vine red carpet swallowing their footsteps.

“We are expected to play almost all the way around the clock, mainly for the internationally famous or influential people. A rare opportunity,” tightly smiled at her Felicja, displeased by something. Agnes was beginning to suspect this was just the woman’s nature. “You are an unknown, so you would mainly be a stand-in between the acts and as a background live music in halls. You said you knew and was prepared for playing all of the compositions on the list you sent, but failed to mention what are your best ones. This is neither a place - nor time - for overconfidence.” Felicja turned to her, staring intently. “Which ones are your bests?”

She stared back, a passive-aggressive smile on her lips. “I can play _all_ of them wonderfully.”

Felicja’s lip curled, unconvinced. “We’ll see.”

They emerged into a spacious lounge, clearly intended for the upper-class passengers. In the corner, on an elevated platform, an antique parlor grand piano stood.

* * *

Couple hours later, she got the mandatory instructions every passenger received for the conduct in case an unexpected disaster happened and the ship began sinking. They do those each time there are new people coming aboard, either by one (like her, since it was a day before the actual boarding) or, more often, in groups. Agnes listened to it halfheartedly. Sailor (as the the briefing had to be performed by one of the crew) told her where to find safety vests (in her cabin), where to go for rescue boats (hanging along the upper deck) and what you should do if there were no more boats (ring and bench, preferably have a torch, definitely should have a vest).

More than the instruction, Agnes was interested in the man himself, who in passing introduced himself as Tony. 

He was obviously bored, paying little to none attention to her personally, giving her an opportunity to look at him up and down for however long she liked. Short dark-teal hair, tired sandy eyes, _incredibly_ fit body and half a head taller than her. He stood straight and sure, unruffled by the boring task or her admittedly pretty face, confident in himself. He didn't spare her a second glance.

She both liked and disliked what she saw, but when didn’t she? 

Well, no matter - they had rather different working hours and, in completely different parts of the ship, judging by his tan. No chances of subtly meeting while on voyage. 

“Any questions?”

“None,” shook her head Agnes, looking at his hands.

“Then welcome aboard, yada, yada,” the man pressed fingers on the corners of his eyes, massaging them. “Look…” he sighed, stopping that sentence, before aiming for another angle. ”Good luck dealing with a buncha rich assholes. Last time we got a new musician, she fell off the ship on the third night, hitting her head on the way down,” he leveled a heavy gaze on her. 

“Don’t you worry,” laughed Agnes, giving thumbs up. “If I decide to kill myself off during the cruise, I will keep it in until we get to the port.”

The man tersely nodded and turned away sharply on his heels, walking away.

Whether that was a real story, Agnes had no doubts. She believed that the girl died, but unlikely by her own plan. 

Wasn’t like it helped the crew with all the hours they had to fill on the spot. Rough experiences are more memorable when you can’t get away from them.

Like on the ship.

Musician’s hours were already stretched, a single one to bow out all of a sudden was enough to have the worry spread outside the performance crew. She could only imagine slowly raising anxiety when Jimmel dropped the bombshell that he wasn’t going to join them on this cruise.

Luckily for them, he didn’t intend to just ditch them, with how unprepared Felicja was to handle the vacated spot. He knew that and now they had her!

* * *

The first night of a cruise was a tricky one to plan, but once done, the crew executed it each time with almost no significant changes.

That is, if this was a normal cruise ship, and not Tethys.

No, here the ordinary people juggled the first night as best as could, inviting special guests to star the first night and then perform every so often in the ballrooms or main lounges or in the casino. They were basically on the cruise themselves, work hours short, paycheck fat and attention welcomed.

Agnes was not a special guest. Her role was smaller, more tiring and, obviously, less paid. She was there not to amaze world-class hoarders with her mad skills in the key entertainment locations, no. She had her hours planned across the dining hall and several smaller lounges to make the atmosphere while being one with the background.

And she was fine with that!

Which was, apparently, an unusual opinion for a stand-in.

“You sure? While your coloring is bland,” he pointedly looked at her dull brown hair and steel gray eyes, “you are young and beautiful - the geezers will be staring at you as if you were working specifically as a visual, might even try to corner you later,” arched his eyebrows Douta, another pianist, happy-looking middle-aged man, with a sizeable beer tummy. He was a friendly conversationalist, but the contents of his plate pulled more of his attention than she did, only speaking up after her statement.

Agnes finished chewing her risotto before answering. “I thought that personnel molestation was strictly prohibited and penalized on respectable cruise ships?”

“It is,” answered May, one of the few harpists, while Douta tried to get more than one noodle of spaghetti on his fork, fully concentrated on the task. “But have you _seen_ how filthy rich they are and how much liquor they loaded on this ship?”

“No,” curiosity piqued, she shook her head, “I haven’t.”

May showed her, in one of the storage rooms, where Agnes would not have been allowed, if she were by herself, a stranger to the crew. The harpist also introduced her to several crewmates.

She was glad (and lucky) they did it. 

And, she had to admit, it _was_ a _lot_ of booze.

* * *

She spent the rest of the day exploring the ship as much as she could, decks without passengers being unnaturally empty. If she put her imagination to it, it seemed haunted, with the silent empty corridors that seemed to stretch on forever, like she could walk through them for hours and never reach the end.

Morning of the next day was just as lovely, but the cruise personnel were buzzing around in the last-minute preparations and double-checks and the illusion of a dream was no longer there.

And then people started climbing on board, destroying last wisps of calm. Agnes scuffled to her tiny cabin that, benefits of a huge ship, she got all to herself, even if it was tiny. She began preparing for the evening two hours in advance, wasting her time inside, as the passengers boarded, got instructed and were ambling around, getting accustomed with the ship.

Agnes brushed hair again and then again, clasping brown strands with a barrette, voices outside a white noise to her. Doing repetitive motions, she absentmindedly skimmed through her schedule again, despite having learned it by heart the day before. She knew exactly where and when she would be and what pieces she would have to play in each of her spots.

She switched her lenses and wore the least fancy dress a live piano musician could get away with. After a moment of consideration, she wore another one, more festive, all too aware of the scrutiny she would be under today. Not from passengers, they were functionally blind to her choice of attire, but from regular members of the crew. 

At large cruise ships, there _was_ rotation, sailors came and went (however rarely), as well as maids, cooks, bartenders, officiants and all the others from the service sector - life on sea without the pleasures they had on the land was hard for the unaccustomed, making their work a on-and-off thing, but the musician’s crew (sans the “star guests”) were pretty much uniformly constant.

Agnes liked the performance crew well enough, deciding she wanted to leave a good impression.

So she left her third dress, the fanciest one, for another night.

The only thing she had to do, was to get through the grand opening night without any trouble.

Which she did.

All in all, it went… as expected? 

Her face _did_ make her an eye candy for all the passengers, lazily swirling their drinks in glasses, but nobody tried anything. She rotated with several other musicians during the evening and part of the night, getting to her cabin at, roughly, three in the morning, when only the most dedicated or bored were still hanging in the lounges. Obviously, they weren’t the only ones up and around, but Agnes wasn’t interested in what dealings and “simple catching up” happened in the presentations room and conference halls.

When she woke up the next night, they had almost sailed out of the Bottoranean Sea and were soon entering Gaftlou Sea, the most northern point of the Known World.

She spent the next day roaming around the ship again, poking her nose in the deepest corners of it.

Her luggage, properly rummaged through, was put away in the tiny closet in her room, the documents hid in a safe so small, she was sure it could be called adorable. She did not need a lot of clothes and most of her stuff was either on the shelves, a small shapeless backpack or in her over-shoulder bag with a lovely flower print, comparatively empty after her previous wanderings, which she took with her as she went out.

Since she was seen the previous evening either working, or was straight up introduced, seamen weren’t paying attention to her, separation from the general passengers letting her in staff-only doors. It wasn’t strictly allowed, but, instead of being politely asked out, she just pinched her eyebrows and batted her eyes, saying this was her first time behind the curtain of a cruise ship. Her coy smile usually made the sailors soften, huff in exasperation and roll their eyes, but let her off the hook and instead either allowed her to roam in unimportant halls or let her a glimpse in other rooms, hidden further.

She even got to walk around in various machinery rooms, where she was allowed only with someone watching, paying attention that she wouldn't touch anything… Which was fair.

She was pleased, getting to wander everywhere she wanted.

The thoughts of praise floated in the back of her head and she found herself smiling at them, patting herself on the head. What a great day.

After she looked at the rescue boats hanging around, Agnes spent a lot of time people-watching on the upper deck, close to one of the pools, enjoying her break before the night. May found her there, and they had some light chit-chat for the rest of the afternoon. 

Agnes liked May. They exchanged numbers, having forgotten to do that the previous day.

* * *

Agnes closed her eyes, raising arms above her head, stretching her back. She was almost ready for this evening, already dressed up and having put more evening variation of mascara on. She wore her fanciest attire, a slick black pencil dress made from dense cloth, that made her look taller than she actually was, her hair mostly purposefully gracefully unkempt, but adorned with the same barrette, keeping all stray strands away from her face. Children's voices sped past her room, playing catch-up in long halls.

The phone was on the table, both May and her stopping texting in lieu of preparing for their job. Agnes carefully painted her lips only partially, not filling them fully to their fullest, making them seem smaller than they were.

It was six in the evening when she put small sapphire earrings on, bobbing her head from side to side to the tune of the song May sent her.

Happy laughter passed by her room, echoed by another voice.

Leaning closer to the mirror, Agnes checked her make-up. It was not the most flattering one, but was perfect for now. Besides, it was only for a few hours.

She opened a colored contact lenses case, old ones taken and thrown out earlier, before she began dressing up, putting in the first one and winking to herself before putting the other one.

In the mirror, sapphire-blue eye winked back.

* * *

When some jazz piano arrangement was ending, Agnes turned the corner and went to the piano, walking near the wall, avoiding any eye contact. Douta finished, standing up and leaving with a short small bow. She stepped on the slightly elevated platform as soon as he left and, with a similar bow, sat in his stead. Straightening, she breathed in, readying herself.

Pianist’s change was done quickly, without fuss and for the ones not interested in looking in that direction, the created pause was almost like one between musical pieces, making the background live music seem seamless.

It was eight in the evening.

She began to play.

* * *

At half past one, she had rotated through several rooms, getting fifteen-minute breaks between each one. She was closer to the stern of the ship, not all that far from her room, horizontal-wise, in a small lounge near three conference rooms, one of which was occupied - a group of men and women in expensive suits and dresses entered it a while ago, carrying an air of self-importance so heavy, it should’ve sunk the ship. Their bodyguards stayed in the lounge, either bored of stone-faced, a crowd just as welcoming and rewarding to play to as an empty room was. Important People(™) left the door open - it’s not as if she could have listened up on them, not through the music and normal-sized entryways between rooms. Likely, none of the bodyguards could hear them either.

She had played in similar scenarios a lot in these two nights, watchful eyes staring for different reasons than various crew departments.

She glanced at the clock. One-thirty two am.

Agnes smiled sadly and started playing Chopin Nocturne Op 48 No.1 C minor.

A bit over four minutes later, the first series of explosions rang.

She gasped, the melody cut short on an ugly clang she made, startled.

Frozen in place, she looked around wildly for a couple seconds, as the voices in the conference room yelped or swore violently. The bodyguards rushed to the room, swiftly dragging out their clients, heading towards the deck. Their loud voices snapped her out of stupor.

Agnes jumped to her feet, body twitching, unsure in what direction to run.

Another series of explosions rang, detonating in quick succession, shaking the floor so hard, she almost fell back onto the piano bench. She kept upright, grabbing on the piano board, the discordant sound a pitiful short thing that nobody paid attention to.

Finally, the alarm came to life.

Halls slowly began filling with hustling, half-asleep people, in their instinctual panic running towards the rescue boats. Very few of them had vests, too sudden the threat, too mindlessly asleep the crowd.

Agnes didn’t head towards boats. She ran towards her cabin, as fast as she reasonably could, hitching her pencil dress higher. Oh, how she wished to run slower.

But there was no time for sentimentality.

Her heels, albeit low, slowed Agnes down and gave her a risk of a sprained ankle, so she ditched them on the stairs, another passenger almost crashing into her as he hurried up, steadying them by her shoulders and then continuing on his way.

Agnes burst into her room, shut door somewhat cutting out the noise of the siren and people’s panic. She deeply exhaled, closing her eyes. The back of her head thumped against the door as she tilted it back, allowing herself one single second for the farewell.

“Goodbye, Agnes. Rest in peace,” she said, smiling wistfully.

The second ended. She was still on the clock, a different one from the pianist’s.

Hastily, she took off her dress, careful to not tear off her wig. She shed the underwear and put the bottom part of the bright swimsuit, checking if the upper part was tied inside-out securely to the cloth backpack, dark grey blending with the straps. Grabbing the phone with a couple unread messages from May, JinSoul smashed it against the corner of the dressing table.

Throwing a few strands of auburn hair away with a flick of her head, she carefully put sapphire earrings in a small, completely waterproof box, double-checking that it was properly closed. Initially, it was for an usb drive, but she repurposed, more interested in the box than in yet another flash drive. The box went in her backpack that already had several sealed waterproof packages inside - a dress, pair of ballerinas and some cash with a credit card for later.

Swiftly, she removed her make-up, unwilling to get stuck with no way of fully removing it for the next few days. Lenses were thrown into the trash.

Four explosions - she heard distinctly that there were _four_ and she knew there were _five_ planted - rang from both stern and the bow of the ship, barely above than the slowly rising waterline.

There had to be three more, on the level lower, in the next two minutes. A couple more destructive explosions for the inside of the hull were to happen ten seconds after that. Afterwards, it was time for some manual work.

Amidst her precise movement, JinSoul pursed her lips.

This _really_ wasn’t the usual (or best) use of her skills. 

She put her dress back on, then her backpack and a safety jacket over it, somewhat hiding it. Looking at it’s bright reflection in the mirror, she scoffed.

They were no longer in warm (to her) and lovely (again, to her) Bottoranean Sea. No, Gaftlou Sea only got to be the sea in name - it was in the region where the seabed was almost on the same level as Bottoranean’s (well, still an abyssal plain), before rapidly plunging into the unknown. There was no connection to land in any way, but plenty to the cold streams from Lake Moebius.

On top of being technically in what functioned as an ocean, at the moment they were right on one of those chilling flows, floating above the true abyss.

Safety vests were pretty much useless in these temperatures, was all she was saying.

JinSoul burst back into the hall, panic written on her face, people still leaving their rooms, clutching their bags, not luggage (which, if they had sealed tightly from water, were an arguably better option). Their eyes, wild and confused and scared, only focused on the arrows towards the exit, in this case to the closest staircase; one woman saw her and turned back on her heels, probably to grab a safety vest. A couple run past her, each holding a crying young child in their arms.

A better plan for them was to book it to the boats. Better, but not best. Although they didn’t know that bit yet.

Without an ounce of arrogance, JinSoul could tell that was _very_ proficient in Shu. And Agnes loved boats, wanting to touch each and every one she could reach. A blink of In-covered Shu from both hands, a thin line of nenless space between them, a little pull...

As all the others, JinSoul was rushing towards the staircase, but as the passengers hurried upwards, she went lower. As fast a civilian should be able to run in a directionless life-or-death situation, she headed sharply to the stern, looking for the latest exploded area. A handful of people run in her direction, in pajamas and vests. She saw in their eyes that their rational thought they had to remember instructions was extinguished by the rapidly escalated panic, repeated explosions rendering most of the people blind on this ship.

Her problem were those, who weren’t.

You know, like some bodyguards. To those, who were nen-users, she had to appear as civilian as she could, which was half of the reason that she was running so slowly, the other being the cameras.

An informant, who worked under their shared employer, was unable to find _everything_ about the ship in such short term, leaving her in the unknown of which cameras were actually working and which were decoys to make sure people behaved - and she did not have the time to meddle with that issue.

JinSoul, again, was on a tight schedule of less than an hour.

_“Completely below water y the point rescue arrives in the vicinity. No survivors, no floating corpses. All death has to seem natural.”_

She knew he knew that drowning was not called a “natural death”. She did not care to give him any gratification, biting a poor excuse of a bait.

But that meant she had to remove safety vests while hurrying the ship to get below the water, which would take _time_. Ugh. What a troublesome mission!

JinSoul ran through the hall with an urgency in her eyes, mouth slightly open, gulping air from a panicked run, footfalls loud. She was a single turn away from an “exit”, hints of cold salty air welcoming her, mixed with a stench of burnt materials, when she felt somebody use nen.

Not slowing down, she turned the corner, momentum of her helpless run sending her into the other wall, crashing into the door of one of the better economy-class cabins. She cursed, having hit the doorknob with her elbow. JinSoul wasn't hurt, but Agnes would have been.

She saw the place where the bomb detonated, hidden in one of the rooms, the damage enough to open it to both the hall and to the outside world - she could smell the seawater clearly now, past the remnants of smoke and melted plastic. Last reflections of the moonlight just disappeared when her clumsy arrival distracted the teal-haired, sandy-eyed sailor (Was it Tomi? She didn’t remember) from examining the hole with Gyo-blazing eyes.

Haaa, she was so close, too!..

He was without a vest.

JinSoul’s lip curled, shoulders rising. “Where is your vest?” she asked, panic still colored her voice, mixed with agitation. “We should get out of this ship as soon as possible!”

The sailor frowned in confusion, apparently having difficulty remembering her, as his eyes bore into her, seeking any traces of nen. As long as he did not pay attention to her changed eye color, he could look for as long as he wanted.

She huffed, walking closer. “You gave my instruction rundown, I am a stand-in pianist. C’mone what are waiting for?” 

Despite having to speak way louder than usual to be heard both over the siren and waves, she heard rising screaming through the hole, coming from above. Was the boat problem found or was there something else going on?

Two minutes were quickly ticking out.

She grabbed him by his shoulders, shaking with all might an ordinary woman had. “Get yourself together! We have to find you a vest!”

He poured more nen in his eyes, eyeing places where she held him. She raised a hand for a slap, but he caught it, and, deciding she wasn’t a threat, let Gyo dissolve. “You should get on the deck, to the safety boats and benches,” he sighed, instructing her in a commanding tone. He was composed, too composed for her liking. Someone’s agent, most likely, a spy or even an assassin. JinSoul didn’t care either way.

Tick-tock, tick-tock.

She let go of his shoulder, Tomi let go of her arm.

She inhaled, squinting in irritation. “ _You_ should get a ve!..” 

Explosions cut her off. She was prepared for them and was able to go into a proper startle, scared, soundlessly opening her mouth in fear. Her body tensed, freezing her in space.

Tomi was not prepared. He went low, activating Ten, nerves fried in an expectation of an attack and, as a moment passed, cursed, straightening. 

Cloud passed. Warm light of the wall lamps in the hall mixed with cold moonlight, illuminating two sides at once.

“Go away, to the rescue boats,” he said irritably, turning away, dismissing her entirely. Tomi started pouring nen in his fingertips and space in front of him began swelling, about to become his hatsu. Completely absorbed in his actions, he invitingly left his back defenseless.

Seeping her nen from In state, she lifted the ridge of her hand and shot out, aiming at the back of his neck.

A cleanly cleft head flew in the air.

Gathered nen dispersed and Tomi’s body fell, head landing a moments later.

Tick-tock.

Diving back into In, JinSoul turned to the exit and crossed the room, taking off and throwing her vest to the side. Without a pause, she jumped into the water, silently, seamlessly.

Through water, she heard the last of the planned explosions.

* * *

It was cold, terribly cold and just like she was used to. It was also dark, moonlight bright, for what it was, but it illuminated almost nothing, getting only a meter and a half deep. Also just like she was used to.

Explosions were too much not what JinSoul usually worked with, too flashy, too aggressive, and oh, how pleasant it was to leave that cacophony outside.

She dove down, in one powerful push reaching two meter lower. Water pressure was something she never paid attention to anymore, at low depth not feeling it at all and, at higher depth, letting her hatsu to deal with it.

She faced the surface, smiling at a beautiful moonlit gleam. 

She fully exhaled.

_Scylla._

JinSoul inhaled, free.


End file.
